This was a very interesting thread to rediscover. To add some further clarity here, in 1998, Terry Melcher re-told the story in greater, less dramatic detail, and again specified that the station was KHJ. Terry said that he called up Bill Drake (Ron Jacobs' boss) to straighten things out with the DJ and noted that it took place at about 2am, hence the trouble getting inside. He described the entourage of other cars as people from Capitol Records.

There's this, from an article in the July 16 LA Times: On July 5, Brian Wilson finished the tape and invited Capitol’s director of artists and repertoire, Karl Engemann, to the house to hear it. “I arrived,” Engemann said, “and no one was there. Brian had gotten so excited with the finished tape that he had taken it to radio station KHJ so he could hear it on the radio.” Then he took copies to other local stations, placing Capitol in the difficult position of listening to music which legally belonged to the company but which the company could not immediately distribute. Legal difficulties, however, appear to be near settlement and the latest word from Taylor is that the single should be distributed late this week on a new label, Brother Records, Inc., distributed by Capitol.

Heroes and Villains b/w You're Welcome was delivered to Capitol for mastering on July 7. So, based on that report, late at night on July 5 or very early in the morning of July 6 checks out as when it happened, however much of it did happen in reality.

My main criticisms, which you're conveniently avoiding to address this strawman argument, are the fact that they forced a home studio into his house he couldn't even use without THEIR permission. (So, all the extra expectations of productivity and other people coming and going in YOUR HOUSE at their pleasure, but none of the benefits for you).

Forest for tree here, but I think this is another example casting the Beach Boys as monsters for something that didn't really happen the way you're framing it. Brian begged for a home studio! He went on and on about wanting one of his own for ages. Marilyn and Danny Hutton have both said as much. The original makeshift setup involved a Gates Radio Company console and equipment mostly rented from Wally Heider's that could be used any time of year. Later, for practical reasons, new sound system equipment was developed for the road that could also be multipurpose installed as a more durable setup in the house. Kind of a weird way to do it, sure, but it isn't as if this was designed to constrain and control Brian. He was personally wealthy enough that he could've had a permanent studio built outside of the Beach Boys corporation if he'd wanted. When the equipment was moved out of the house at Marilyn's behest, Brian spent years talking about wishing he had it back.

Now this gets into some of the deeper layers that were a factor during this specific time, and also gets into how the personal issues would have an effect on the music and the band's business. Brian may have wanted a home studio, no doubt he did because he had an ad hoc studio at his previous house with expensive tape machines (including his own 8-track machine) and primitive mixers as early as 1966, we have photo evidence. But when it got into say 1969-70-71 was Brian actually actively using the studio in his house? It did become like a business venture for the band more than a place for Brian to work on his music. He rarely ventured down to the studio when the guys were there working except to occasionally offer a suggestion. Yet he and his wife and kids (key point to come there...) heard what the band was doing.

Picture having two daughters under 5 years old, a wife/mother taking care of them, and all the other issues of being a homeowner. And then you have a studio running at who knows what hours where you'd hear the tracks being recorded and mixed in your own home. What if you needed a break so to speak? Nope, this was the business agreement made with the band/corporation and these guys needed to record.

I'm just thinking that arrangement wore thin after some point, from a personal perspective, and again Brian who had the studio in his house was probably the least involved in actually using it at various points in time during that era.

There was also the situation where I believe it was Mike had invested in some of the road gear, which was also rented out to other acts, so he was collecting rental fees when the band toured with that live sound equipment as well as if it were rented to other acts. Check with Desper on that one...but was Brian getting anything for the use of his house apart from the gear itself, which he didn't personally own outright?

And the personal layer is as simple as imagine raising a family with a baby and toddler and dealing with that, and having musicians coming and going and recording music that you could hear in the house, and that's just on Marilyn's side. With Brian, if he were 22 again and super competitive and brimming with ideas to put his band on the top of the charts, he'd be in that studio cutting tracks whenever he wanted. By 1969 that simply wasn't the case, and yes he DID agree to the business arrangement for the studio, but man that probably got old pretty quick if there was little or no break from music being made in that studio and people coming and going when Brian wasn't even directly involved.

Just raising that as one issue out of many where the personal and the business/music intersected, perhaps negatively, and how what seemed like a good idea could turn sour.

Point being, maybe Brian loved the idea of having a studio setup like that in his house, but the reality and everyday issues surrounding that reality weren't as great as the concept and they were a few years too late in the execution.

No disagreement with any of this, all great observations. I just object to the original framing of it (not in your post) as if the Beach Boys forced a studio into Brian's home that he could then only use when they allowed, evilly, as if it was a sinister machination to hold his leash. It was basically an amenity that Brian wanted at first, then life and convenience changed around it. Danny Hutton likened it to having a private pool; once you've got it, it's so easily in reach that the thing sort of loses appeal. And then imagine that, but Al Jardine is also in your pool.

As ever, it's a deeply nuanced situation where the personal relationships and working dynamics do and don't clash. Nobody would deny that Brian and Carl had a difficult time with each other in the post-Landy years. It's the idea that Carl was being disingenuous in the Was interview and in his general attitude about Brian's music that I think just isn't a fair or accurate characterisation of the guy.

The oft repeated accusation that Carl hated Brian's new tunes and shut down the Beach Boys reunion sessions is such a puzzling thing when you actually get down to what's been said about it. Because, well... he just didn't.

The Baywatch Nights session was a one-off in March '95. According to Andy, he thought the session with Carl and Mike had gone well, until afterwards Brian announced without explanation that he'd hated the experienced and never wanted to do it again. The "Beach Boys are trying to destroy me" interview appeared a few months down the line. I'm not refreshed on whether the snubbed listening invite happened in '94 or '95, but again according to Andy, there was a listening session with Carl at Don Was' house in 1995 where Carl reacted very favourably to the material. Only two days at Ocean Way were booked in November as a test to see if the group would get on with each other, which they apparently did, aside from a slightly strange atmosphere around Mike, who arrived on his lonesome on the second afternoon. Eyewitnesses (Mike Harris, Cindy Lee Berryhill, Andy Paley, Matt Jardine) all describe an enthusiastic atmosphere with Carl upbeat, professional, and down to sing whatever Brian wanted however he wanted it.

Nothing further was planned, but the thought was that the sessions might move to Don Was' Chomsky Ranch studio on the proviso that he coordinate their schedules. He didn't, and in Don's own memory of what happened next (via Mark Dillon's book), a month passed before he told Brian that the material wasn't up to snuff, and that he should write better songs before they work on an album. Brian's enthusiasm obviously evaporated at that, and the situation never came up again. The group had already committed to Stars & Stripes at that point (started beforehand, in October '95) and by early 1996 were in Nashville working with Joe Thomas. Brian and Melinda put the blame on Carl for changing his tune and deciding Soul Searchin' wasn't commercial enough some amount of time after the fact, but clearly whenever this conversation took place it was already a non-starter. Bruce was gunning for the group to work with Sean O'Hagan and Melinda was gunning for Brian to focus on a solo album with Joe Thomas. Carl certainly didn't shut a project in progress down, and it isn't a situation where you can assign blame to any one person. Don Was, if someone has to take the fall.

Thank you for adding those details. I do think though that some of the scenes in question are being conflated into other issues, and some points mentioned that were more isolated cases, like the whole Baywatch Nights debacle.

I think trying to "blame" Don Was in these cases is similar to those who try to blame or assign more weight to one factor over others for the collapse of Smile in '67. It's not possible to do so because of so many external influences and other moving parts.

There are several very strong undercurrents running at this time in the band's and Brian's timeline. Some of them are personal and interpersonal, some are business, and some are just they way things happened in the process. You cannot point a finger at Don Was without pointing another at Carl, and then the rest of the band. Remember The Beach Boys at this point were a corporation. And they were also a group lost in the wilderness desperately trying to get a label deal. They had no original music to offer of any consequence, yet were still basking in the afterglow of the renewed interest in their back catalog Capitol classics, from the box set to the reissues to TV appearances. And yet they couldn't score a new deal and had no songs to speak of in the can to get such a deal. Most deals, I'm fairly certain, hinged on Brian's involvement in the music and his name being attached to any project. Even Joe Thomas had to make deals to get Willie Nelson involved to bring Brian on board, since he was not interested in it otherwise. And in fairness, he did have dozens of songs in reserve if they needed them - which they did.

Now how much power did Don Was have, and what did he think his role was? He originally wanted to work with Brian, and began doing so, cutting original tracks with Paley and Don's regular crew of session cats like Waddy. When Brian became "free", he told Don he wanted to make music with The Boys again. So did that shift Don's role from working with Brian as he wanted to do to working with "The Beach Boys", which is an entirely different set of circumstances. Did Don eventually balk at the group politics and dynamics associated with that, could that have been a factor too? Did Don simply feel that after hearing "The Beach Boys" on songs he had been working up with Brian and Paley that they were not what The Beach Boys needed to make a hit? Maybe good for a Brian solo project, maybe not for what The Beach Boys were looking for?

Then factor in the interpersonal stuff, including the lawsuits (plural), the tensions already in the band without Brian's involvement, and the tension with Brian's return and the past several years of nonsense that went on.

It was not a good time. The details could fill pages. But I think again the family issues and at times turmoil mixed with jealousy and resentment contributed as much to various happenings as anything a producer-for-hire like Don Was could have had an effect. And again I'm curious to hear and speculate whether Don was fully on-board producing the Beach Boys rather than just working with Brian, and whether at any points he may have asked "did I sign up for this?" when it shifted from working with Brian to trying to get The Beach Boys a record deal and back on the charts with new material.

I/we could add much more to this but that's a start.

To be clear, I'm not actually blaming Was as the reason it fell apart, I used that comparison to highlight that he probably shouldered more direct responsibility for the project not going forward than Carl, who can't have been more than another cog in the general vague sputtering out of this thing rather than the arch villain. A lot of conflict and dramatic objections tend to be to put into the telling of what happened here but in my view, after doing a lot of digging, the album basically just crumbled into the rear view under indifference and mismanagement the way a lot of Beach Boys ideas tend to. They all hold responsibility for fumbling the potential. It was plainly a huge failing of them all for not rallying behind an enthusiastic Brian who had material that sounded as good as You're Still a Mystery. While Carl likely didn't help, nobody else lifted a finger to keep it going, and Bruce was actively going out of his way to start them on something else. Don Was probably just undervalued that it took a miracle to get them together in the first place, and they'd need to keep being glued in close proximity under cohesive leadership or it wouldn't happen at all. Joe Thomas, for all the questionable things he did with music, was a "get stuff done" guy who spoke corporate and knew how to maintain the balance. He wasn't taking his time between calls and turning up to places barefoot.

I do think that Don Was wanted to work with the Beach Boys. What he was after was a Pet Sounds 2 for current times, and he said as much in interviews. He envisioned Brian and Mike writing deep stuff about working through their family troubles, probably not songs titled Baywatch Nights. During the IJWMFTT doc shoot in 1994, he was filmed on the phone pitching to Elliott Lott the idea of getting the guys down to a studio and singing parts on one of Brian's new tracks on camera (Proud Mary floated as an option), just to test them working together again and get a positive public image rolling. I think working with Brian was one thing, working on a competent Beach Boys album of Brian Wilson songs was the real ambition. Proud Mary, Wasserman's Trios, and the documentary remakes aside, he had been fairly distant to what Brian and Andy were stacking up in the studio until this came together in November 1995.

Yes, and just for the record I remember all of this stuff trickling out into the music press in 95 and 96, and I still have "Pulse!" magazine, Tower Records' in-house magazine from November 1995, Brian and Van Dyke on the cover promoting Orange Crate Art. That's where there was a sidebar article about Don Was working with Brian and describing how he told them how uplifting it would be to write a song about about the truths of their lives and family, etc...and they came back with Baywatch Nights.

I've posted that article or at least clips/scans of sections on this board in past years, not sure if they're still accessible, but I'd highly recommend looking for that Pulse! issue Nov. 1995 for the interview. That is also where Brian tells about the Boys not returning his calls and not showing up for the listening party he had invited them to, and it says Brian was hurt by this (obviously!).

Similarly, I have Mix magazine March 1996 where Brian is interviewed by "Bonzai", invited by Don Was to the studio where Don's crew was recording with Brian and Andy, to photograph and interview Brian. That article has some neat descriptions of the recording process Don was helming at the time, and how Don and the guys were cutting the tracks live and sometimes on the fly to capture that electric live feel of the past. Brian also mentions how Carl was excited about the track "Soul Searchin" ('Carl liked it a lot') after saying Andy wrote most of that himself, and in Brian's mind, quote, "Andy was a hero to Carl".

There's also a quote at the end of the Pulse! article where Don Was says of Brian and Andy's new songs "of the 40 new songs we've got, a handful are as good as anything he's written."

That last quote would seem to contradict the notion that Don didn't feel the material was strong enough. So was Don's opinion that the material was as good as anything Brian had written, but not what The Beach Boys were looking for? Maybe that's the crux of it. But it would seem like a direct contradiction for him to say that, then say the material wasn't up to par.

Oh yeah, thanks, the Pulse issue, that's the one I was thinking of. I've read that one and I've heard of the Bonzai interview in Mix magazine but have never been able to find a copy. Would you be able to post that anywhere if it's in reach? Really interested to read about any studio behind the scenes. I'm guessing that was reporting on the Nov 7 and 8 sessions at Ocean Way, where they cut basic tracks for Soul Searchin', You're Still a Mystery, It's Not Easy Being Me and Turn On Your Love Light, a week and a half before the Beach Boys came in and sang. Pulse being the interview where Brian mentions them cancelling on his listening invite makes sense of the timeline - it's a few months down the line from the aborted March attempt, then it must've been shortly after this that Carl did go along to Don Was' house with Brian and Andy to hear what they'd been working on.

Noticed this as well in the Pulse report from Don: "Halfway through the movie, what Brian said to me was, 'I want more than anything to make a Beach Boys album, but you go talk to them.' So I did, and they were all anxious to work with him. Since the film is partly about him repairing his damaged relationships, I thought, fine - let's get it on film, even if it's uncomfortable. They were all receptive to that, but ultimately the lawsuits prevented it from happening." I'd forgotten about the context behind it, but that's exactly what he did during the shoot. That was early August '94 and he was trying to arrange for the others to drop in alongside Carl. Didn't know what postponed it so long, but, um... the lawsuit would make sense.

It would kind of make sense that Don had different expectations about a Brian Wilson album and a Beach Boys album. A new Brian solo record didn't have to change the world, but with the Beach Boys, he said himself that he was fretting about making a worthy successor to Pet Sounds, which was obviously in everyone's ears around the time of the 30th anniversary.

My main criticisms, which you're conveniently avoiding to address this strawman argument, are the fact that they forced a home studio into his house he couldn't even use without THEIR permission. (So, all the extra expectations of productivity and other people coming and going in YOUR HOUSE at their pleasure, but none of the benefits for you).

Forest for tree here, but I think this is another example casting the Beach Boys as monsters for something that didn't really happen the way you're framing it. Brian begged for a home studio! He went on and on about wanting one of his own for ages. Marilyn and Danny Hutton have both said as much. The original makeshift setup involved a Gates Radio Company console and equipment mostly rented from Wally Heider's that could be used any time of year. Later, for practical reasons, new sound system equipment was developed for the road that could also be multipurpose installed as a more durable setup in the house. Kind of a weird way to do it, sure, but it isn't as if this was designed to constrain and control Brian. He was personally wealthy enough that he could've had a permanent studio built outside of the Beach Boys corporation if he'd wanted. When the equipment was moved out of the house at Marilyn's behest, Brian spent years talking about wishing he had it back.

As ever, it's a deeply nuanced situation where the personal relationships and working dynamics do and don't clash. Nobody would deny that Brian and Carl had a difficult time with each other in the post-Landy years. It's the idea that Carl was being disingenuous in the Was interview and in his general attitude about Brian's music that I think just isn't a fair or accurate characterisation of the guy.

The oft repeated accusation that Carl hated Brian's new tunes and shut down the Beach Boys reunion sessions is such a puzzling thing when you actually get down to what's been said about it. Because, well... he just didn't.

The Baywatch Nights session was a one-off in March '95. According to Andy, he thought the session with Carl and Mike had gone well, until afterwards Brian announced without explanation that he'd hated the experienced and never wanted to do it again. The "Beach Boys are trying to destroy me" interview appeared a few months down the line. I'm not refreshed on whether the snubbed listening invite happened in '94 or '95, but again according to Andy, there was a listening session with Carl at Don Was' house in 1995 where Carl reacted very favourably to the material. Only two days at Ocean Way were booked in November as a test to see if the group would get on with each other, which they apparently did, aside from a slightly strange atmosphere around Mike, who arrived on his lonesome on the second afternoon. Eyewitnesses (Mike Harris, Cindy Lee Berryhill, Andy Paley, Matt Jardine) all describe an enthusiastic atmosphere with Carl upbeat, professional, and down to sing whatever Brian wanted however he wanted it.

Nothing further was planned, but the thought was that the sessions might move to Don Was' Chomsky Ranch studio on the proviso that he coordinate their schedules. He didn't, and in Don's own memory of what happened next (via Mark Dillon's book), a month passed before he told Brian that the material wasn't up to snuff, and that he should write better songs before they work on an album. Brian's enthusiasm obviously evaporated at that, and the situation never came up again. The group had already committed to Stars & Stripes at that point (started beforehand, in October '95) and by early 1996 were in Nashville working with Joe Thomas. Brian and Melinda put the blame on Carl for changing his tune and deciding Soul Searchin' wasn't commercial enough some amount of time after the fact, but clearly whenever this conversation took place it was already a non-starter. Bruce was gunning for the group to work with Sean O'Hagan and Melinda was gunning for Brian to focus on a solo album with Joe Thomas. Carl certainly didn't shut a project in progress down, and it isn't a situation where you can assign blame to any one person. Don Was, if someone has to take the fall.

Thank you for adding those details. I do think though that some of the scenes in question are being conflated into other issues, and some points mentioned that were more isolated cases, like the whole Baywatch Nights debacle.

I think trying to "blame" Don Was in these cases is similar to those who try to blame or assign more weight to one factor over others for the collapse of Smile in '67. It's not possible to do so because of so many external influences and other moving parts.

There are several very strong undercurrents running at this time in the band's and Brian's timeline. Some of them are personal and interpersonal, some are business, and some are just they way things happened in the process. You cannot point a finger at Don Was without pointing another at Carl, and then the rest of the band. Remember The Beach Boys at this point were a corporation. And they were also a group lost in the wilderness desperately trying to get a label deal. They had no original music to offer of any consequence, yet were still basking in the afterglow of the renewed interest in their back catalog Capitol classics, from the box set to the reissues to TV appearances. And yet they couldn't score a new deal and had no songs to speak of in the can to get such a deal. Most deals, I'm fairly certain, hinged on Brian's involvement in the music and his name being attached to any project. Even Joe Thomas had to make deals to get Willie Nelson involved to bring Brian on board, since he was not interested in it otherwise. And in fairness, he did have dozens of songs in reserve if they needed them - which they did.

Now how much power did Don Was have, and what did he think his role was? He originally wanted to work with Brian, and began doing so, cutting original tracks with Paley and Don's regular crew of session cats like Waddy. When Brian became "free", he told Don he wanted to make music with The Boys again. So did that shift Don's role from working with Brian as he wanted to do to working with "The Beach Boys", which is an entirely different set of circumstances. Did Don eventually balk at the group politics and dynamics associated with that, could that have been a factor too? Did Don simply feel that after hearing "The Beach Boys" on songs he had been working up with Brian and Paley that they were not what The Beach Boys needed to make a hit? Maybe good for a Brian solo project, maybe not for what The Beach Boys were looking for?

Then factor in the interpersonal stuff, including the lawsuits (plural), the tensions already in the band without Brian's involvement, and the tension with Brian's return and the past several years of nonsense that went on.

It was not a good time. The details could fill pages. But I think again the family issues and at times turmoil mixed with jealousy and resentment contributed as much to various happenings as anything a producer-for-hire like Don Was could have had an effect. And again I'm curious to hear and speculate whether Don was fully on-board producing the Beach Boys rather than just working with Brian, and whether at any points he may have asked "did I sign up for this?" when it shifted from working with Brian to trying to get The Beach Boys a record deal and back on the charts with new material.

I/we could add much more to this but that's a start.

To be clear, I'm not actually blaming Was as the reason it fell apart, I used that comparison to highlight that he probably shouldered more direct responsibility for the project not going forward than Carl, who can't have been more than another cog in the general vague sputtering out of this thing rather than the arch villain. A lot of conflict and dramatic objections tend to be to put into the telling of what happened here but in my view, after doing a lot of digging, the album basically just crumbled into the rear view under indifference and mismanagement the way a lot of Beach Boys ideas tend to. They all hold responsibility for fumbling the potential. It was plainly a huge failing of them all for not rallying behind an enthusiastic Brian who had material that sounded as good as You're Still a Mystery. While Carl likely didn't help, nobody else lifted a finger to keep it going, and Bruce was actively going out of his way to start them on something else. Don Was probably just undervalued that it took a miracle to get them together in the first place, and they'd need to keep being glued in close proximity under cohesive leadership or it wouldn't happen at all. Joe Thomas, for all the questionable things he did with music, was a "get stuff done" guy who spoke corporate and knew how to maintain the balance. He wasn't taking his time between calls and turning up to places barefoot.

I do think that Don Was wanted to work with the Beach Boys. What he was after was a Pet Sounds 2 for current times, and he said as much in interviews. He envisioned Brian and Mike writing deep stuff about working through their family troubles, probably not songs titled Baywatch Nights. During the IJWMFTT doc shoot in 1994, he was filmed on the phone pitching to Elliott Lott the idea of getting the guys down to a studio and singing parts on one of Brian's new tracks on camera (Proud Mary floated as an option), just to test them working together again and get a positive public image rolling. I think working with Brian was one thing, working on a competent Beach Boys album of Brian Wilson songs was the real ambition. Proud Mary, Wasserman's Trios, and the documentary remakes aside, he had been fairly distant to what Brian and Andy were stacking up in the studio until this came together in November 1995.

You Still Believe in Me: https://beachboyssessions.com/pet-sounds/you-still-believe-in-me/

That's Not Me: https://beachboyssessions.com/pet-sounds/thats-not-me/

I love this!!  Is there any way that you all could consider adding tabs for the guitar and bass parts for future uploads of the sheet music to the official sites?

Thanks!!

P. S. A small preamble explaining how you all got involved in this project could be helpful and interesting as well, if you'd ever consider adding that.  I know c-man and Joshilyn have been working on these things for years, but less (I think) is known about how the rest of you worked your way into such an awesome and lucky group.

There'll be About and Glossary pages added to the site in time along with other things, we're just starting to get it rolling small. I think Joshilyn is considering a way to make midi versions of the scores available but probably wouldn't do guitar or bass tabs.

The relevant passage from Mark Dillon's 50 Sides of the Beach Boys, for anyone curious:  “The first day we had a full band there and Brian went around the room and told everyone what to play and cut the tracks. He was confident. And the next day The Beach Boys came in and did all the vocal parts. Everybody got along and it was a lovely couple of days. There wasn’t a tense moment and the results were pretty good. We did the cuts and lived with them for a month. Then I went to Brian’s house and told him, ‘This shows that a great Beach Boys record could be made, but I think you could write better songs. Let’s do better songs and finish this record.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I agree with you.’ And then Carl was sick and it just never happened. The situation never came up again and I had to live with my role in stopping the momentum. Maybe I should have just kept the momentum going instead of worrying about making a worthy successor to Pet Sounds.”

It isn't as if Was is the devil here, or did anything that would usually be considered unhelpful, but knowing Brian's history of course it put the brakes on his enthusiasm. Whatever Carl expressed about turning on Soul Searchin' specifically, how is that project going to keep moving if the producer himself doesn't want to use the songs Brian's been collecting for the past half decade? It isn't, especially not when they've already signed onto this country album deal that involves flying out to Nashville in a couple of months. Add Bruce and the alternate Sean O'Hagan album pitch to the mix too, then Brian basically hopped straight from that situation to working with Joe Thomas in Chicago. There's a prevailing sense that it could've continued if Was had told them, here's what we're doing next, when and where, but the iron didn't stay hot for long enough.

For a window into the atmosphere on day 2 of the Searchin'/Mystery vocal sessions, visiting engineer Mike Harris did what nobody else ever thought to do after watching the Beach Boys in the studio: sit down on camera two days later and describe everything he saw in detail. https://youtu.be/K8qm6r4-wKg?si=CPM9Oj1GCOCdO6F9

As ever, it's a deeply nuanced situation where the personal relationships and working dynamics do and don't clash. Nobody would deny that Brian and Carl had a difficult time with each other in the post-Landy years. It's the idea that Carl was being disingenuous in the Was interview and in his general attitude about Brian's music that I think just isn't a fair or accurate characterisation of the guy.

The oft repeated accusation that Carl hated Brian's new tunes and shut down the Beach Boys reunion sessions is such a puzzling thing when you actually get down to what's been said about it. Because, well... he just didn't.

The Baywatch Nights session was a one-off in March '95. According to Andy, he thought the session with Carl and Mike had gone well, until afterwards Brian announced without explanation that he'd hated the experienced and never wanted to do it again. The "Beach Boys are trying to destroy me" interview appeared a few months down the line. I'm not refreshed on whether the snubbed listening invite happened in '94 or '95, but again according to Andy, there was a listening session with Carl at Don Was' house in 1995 where Carl reacted very favourably to the material. Only two days at Ocean Way were booked in November as a test to see if the group would get on with each other, which they apparently did, aside from a slightly strange atmosphere around Mike, who arrived on his lonesome on the second afternoon. Eyewitnesses (Mike Harris, Cindy Lee Berryhill, Andy Paley, Matt Jardine) all describe an enthusiastic atmosphere with Carl upbeat, professional, and down to sing whatever Brian wanted however he wanted it.

Nothing further was planned, but the thought was that the sessions might move to Don Was' Chomsky Ranch studio on the proviso that he coordinate their schedules. He didn't, and in Don's own memory of what happened next (via Mark Dillon's book), a month passed before he told Brian that the material wasn't up to snuff, and that he should write better songs before they work on an album. Brian's enthusiasm obviously evaporated at that, and the situation never came up again. The group had already committed to Stars & Stripes at that point (started beforehand, in October '95) and by early 1996 were in Nashville working with Joe Thomas. Brian and Melinda put the blame on Carl for changing his tune and deciding Soul Searchin' wasn't commercial enough some amount of time after the fact, but clearly whenever this conversation took place it was already a non-starter. Bruce was gunning for the group to work with Sean O'Hagan and Melinda was gunning for Brian to focus on a solo album with Joe Thomas. Carl certainly didn't shut a project in progress down, and it isn't a situation where you can assign blame to any one person. Don Was, if someone has to take the fall.

This seems like a pretty uncharitable read of Carl based on a lot of mistruths. The most negative reaction I've ever heard of him giving to Brian's music in the 60s and 70s might be an initial "Huh?" (understandably) before coming around and working hard to see it finished. Many of these attitudes he supposedly had were either nuanced human situations in reality or just not things that he even said or did at all.

Im open to being schooled on what I said that's untrue if you have the time, but I understand if its not something you wanna get bogged down in either. I acknowledge he was in a tough spot too, Carl, watching his bro that everyone relied on fall apart. But from what I can see, Brian had outgrown the guys and wanted to go solo--his friends could see it, and I think this is part of why they were pushed out. Also there was clearly a lot of hurt on both sides in the 80s and 90s and I dont think that came from nowhere; I also think blaming it solely on Landy is a convenient scapegoat, not that he doesn't deserve a mountain of blame and ridicule for his own actions. In a lot of Beach Boy retrospectives it feels like the band is divided into two camps--the Wilsons and the Squares, with Carl either on the "cool kids" side or playing mediator. I think some of that is understandable--Brian and Dennis were out of control by the late seventies--but I also think he played a not insignificant part in getting them to that point. If Brian had been allowed to branch out and Dennis' contributions more respected, actually included over Mike and Al's mediocre songs on albums--I'm willing to bet they wouldn't have spiraled as badly as they did.

Im not nearly as much an expert as others, so I'll admit I could be wrong. But this is where I stand now based on the evidence I've seen. That's probably the nicest way I can express my feelings on Carl's mixed legacy. (They ALL have mixed legacies, of course. Carl never offered his own kid drugs or had sex with his cousin's much younger daughter out of spite.)

"With Carl, my reading of the material is he constantly pressured Brian to be productive again while simultaneously dumping on his output." - I'm wondering what would even inform that impression of him and their working relationship. When are we talking? 60s? 70s? 90s? Aside from his public dejection about the way 15 Big Ones turned out (which he produced the mixdown of, uncredited), where does this idea come from?

Mount Vernon - I mean, Carl co-produced that whole thing side by side with Brian, assembled the edit, and he's the reason it was ever actually completed at all. Not understanding how that would be an example of Carl not supporting Brian's music.

"Like, right here, he's acting as if he were Brian's supporter all along when he was dumping on the Paley stuff at the exact time this interview was filmed." - This whole thing sits somewhere between a wild exaggeration perpetuated on forums and a total falsehood. And anyway, the Beach Boys reunion sessions happened in November 1995. You're talking about an interview Carl shot in August 1994, where he's repeating the same sentiments that he expressed in numerous other interviews throughout his life. I would recommend reading the interview he gave to Geoffrey Himes in 1983 included in Kingsley Abbott's Back to the Beach. If you want to get a sense of what Carl actually thought about the music he recorded as a Beach Boy, that's the place to start.

This seems like a pretty uncharitable read of Carl based on a lot of mistruths. The most negative reaction I've ever heard of him giving to Brian's music in the 60s and 70s might be an initial "Huh?" (understandably) before coming around and working hard to see it finished. Many of these attitudes he supposedly had were either nuanced human situations in reality or just not things that he even said or did at all.

Carl saying those words at random in the middle of a session doesn't suggest in any way that it was a thing he would re-record as part of the actual song. It's just, like... him muttering something between takes. All of them mutter a whole lot of things between takes.

I can't keep up with all 300 of these threads but I'm enjoying them and appreciating that discussion is still being generated! On the structure of Child, there's nothing from the 60s indicating that Brian ever conceived of it any differently to his rough assembly edit. That chorus/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/half-chorus track mixdown put together at the original Western session is the only time he spliced it into the form of a song. Otherwise, there was a rough mix two days later with a single splice from the verse to the chorus to see what it would sound like, and that's all.

Nothing to add to BJL's take on why it didn't get finished, which I think is dead on the money.

As some of you may already know, the research team I'm part of including John Brode, Joshilyn Hoisington, and Craig Slowinski have been developing a website to start disseminating our work and correct outdated information. Ahead of the 60th anniversary, we're beginning with a series of making-of essays and recording breakdowns for Pet Sounds and its outtakes, working through one song at a time. Below the essay section is a lump of information laying out each step of the production chronology, the tracks on tape, and all of the known session dates.

Wouldn't It Be Nice has just been published, You Still Believe in Me is close to being done, and That's Not Me is quite far along. After the rest, the plan is to flesh out the site and start working through other time periods. Joshilyn and John (I helped, slightly) are also developing a complete, note-accurate Pet Sounds arrangement scoring project that'll start to be distributed in the coming days. This is a real labour of love for us, cramming in every exhaustive detail that we could ever imagine wanting to know ourselves, and I'm very excited about finally getting something substantial out there after working together for the past five years. I hope it's an enjoyable read, if you're interested in this sort of thing, and I'll keep coming back with updates as they're posted to the site.

Homepage: beachboyssessions.com/

Wouldn't It Be Nice: beachboyssessions.com/pet-sounds/wouldnt-it-be-nice/

(A huge thank you to Austin Heller, who offered to design the site and has been running around making adjustments like a madman for the past few days to get this ready to go.)

Sessions didn't happen on 8/24, 9/12, 11/8, 11/11, 2/2, or 2/16. Those are all mistakes. Some of this is kinda confusing the way the gang worked, though... A lot of the above dates represent overdub work on existing tapes and can't be viewed as isolated recordings in a vacuum. Like, for example, nothing of Heroes and Villains from February '67 is gone (unless vocal parts were replaced later) - the dates just represent continuing work on things we've already heard, such as the four chants being recorded across several days on a reel only dated 2/20. I'll answer the other questions as best I can.

1) The 8-track master for Good Vibrations with the vocals is missing. But if something's in a mono mix, we've also heard what they did, so the result of that day's work isn't missing.

2) A November 8 date for Surf's Up came from a mistake in Capitol's files.

3) All of that vegetable chanting stuff comes from the November 4 "Psychodelic Sounds" reel. The promo skit with Hal Blaine was definitely November 16.

4) The session on December 15 involved vocals for Cabin Essence and Wonderful, Brian's piano/vocal version of Surf's Up, and You're Welcome, in that order. Nothing was cancelled. "Ball and Mitt" was noted on the tracksheet where the guys chucked around a baseball in the studio for a few minutes in the middle of doing You're Welcome.

5) Basically what I said at the top. The session on Feb 15 did run over midnight into Feb 16, but that happens a lot and cataloguing gets complicated when you start trying to acknowledge those as date changes. The "Piano Bit" version of Bicycle Rider was recorded after Prelude to Fade before heading home.

6) Child vocals were recorded Oct 12 and/or 13, Dec 2, and Dec 6, according to Capitol's files. There were three completely different vocal arrangements of the chorus recorded, each one wiping over the last, and the 8-track master is missing, except for a partial safety copy with only 4 of 8 tracks patched across (in the same boat as Good Vibrations). The "whoa child" piano section in E was most likely recorded April 4.

7) I think the 2/12 and 2/17 dates for Jasper sessions might be questionable, but then again I'm not sure where they came from. All of the Jasper tapes are sadly missing. The only thing currently known to exist is the Teeter Totter Love acetate from Jasper's family that was used on the box.

No Wind Chimes vocals were erased or are missing.

Just some odds and ends here after searching through the remains of Smile Shop on the Internet Archive.

First, I found this additional interview with Jack Reilly where he says again, unambiguously that he wrote the new "their song is love have you listened as they play/yadda yadda and the children know the way" lyrics over the fade of Surf's Up, while the reprise of CIFOTM was pure Brian. This was a bit of a sticking point between me and some other people back in the day who insisted both parts were vintage, so I can't help but point out evidence that confirms my position when I find it.

Won't pretend to understand his reasons, but Jack lied. Those additional lyrics were written by Van Dyke Parks in June 1971. They're in Van Dyke's handwriting and I clarified the issue with him directly.

What Brian's singing there isn't lyrically complete, so I don't think it's a reason to question Joe's credit. This is December 1996 and the original version of How Could We Still Be Dancin' was recorded in about June 1997.

Al switched to guitar when Brian picked up the bass in time for the Richie Valens Memorial show on New Year's Eve 1961. He was the rhythm guitarist from then until he left, but didn't attend the session at World Pacific.

The full versions of those two 1968 quotes have more insight.

Brian for Rock and Other Four Letter Words, interviewed January 11, 1968: “Well, we pulled out of that production pace merely because I was about ready to die, you know? I was trying so hard. And then so all of a sudden I just decided not to try anymore, and not try to do such great things, and such big musical things, and all of a sudden… And we had so much fun. The Smiley Smile area, or era, was so great. It was unbelievable – personally, spiritually, everything. It was great. I didn’t have any paranoiac feelings. Yeah, no paranoia.”

Brian on KHJ's History of Rock and Roll, interviewed December 1968: “Early 1967, I had planned to make an album and title it Smile. I was working with a guy named Van Dyke Parks, who was collaborating with me on the tunes, and in the process we came up with a song called ‘Surf’s Up,’ and I performed that with just a piano on a documentary show made on rock music. The song ‘Surf’s Up’ that I sang for that documentary never came out on an album, and it was supposed to come out on the Smile album, and that and a couple of other songs were junked, because I didn't feel that they... Well, I don't know why. I just didn't, for some reason, didn't want to put them on the album. And the group nearly broke up, actually split up for good over that… that one… the decision of mine not to put a lot of the things that we'd cut for the album Smiley Smile in the album. And so for like almost a year, we're just now kind of getting back together... Because I didn't think that the songs really were right for the public at the time, and I didn't have a feeling, a commercial feeling, about some of these songs that we've never released. And maybe some people like to hang onto certain things, just as their own little songs that they've written almost for themselves. And a lot of times, you know, a person will write, and will realize later that they're not... it's not commercial, you know? That what they've written is nice, for them, but a lot of people just don't like it.”

To clarify this from the Don Was documentary - "I had a great big, a great problem with the Beach Boys. And I wanted to do my kind of music and they wanted to do their kind of music. So it was a tug of war, I felt like I was getting pulled to pieces. Like two...inner turmoil that's struggling, with the see-saw, kind of teeter totter kind of thing, you know? Where I was being pulled all around, you know? And I just about, I fell to pieces." - in context of the full interview, outside of the edit, Brian framed this very specifically as being about the late 1970s. He wasn't discussing the same time period as Marilyn.

Carl's 1983 interview with Geoffrey Himes is always a tentpole when talking about this sort of thing. What he said about Smile: "To get that album out, someone would have had to have the willingness and perseverance to corral all of us and keep Brian to the task of completing the work. But the group didn’t really have any management at the time. The record company was giving us a hard time. It takes a lot of concentration to stay on top of a project like that, and everybody was so loaded on pot and has all the time, that it’s no wonder it didn’t get done. He was getting fragmented; he was starting to have difficulty completing things. And it was also a thing of, what if it didn’t turn out to be great, what if it had totally flopped? That would have completely destroyed him. We would have lost him forever in terms of having any communication with him. Still I’d be very surprised if Smile never came out; that’s what you make music for – so people can hear it. Except we didn’t complete it, so what do you do? Brian might be able to heal a lot of stuff within himself by doing that, by moving through it in spite of the pain. Or maybe it’ll be the field for some other guy. Maybe some very gifted person will hear it and it’ll push them to finish it. But I think it’s going to surface somehow, someday.
   "In the middle of all this, Brian just said, ‘I can’t do this. We’re going to make a homespun version of it instead. We’re just going to take it easy. I’ll get in the pool and sing. Or let’s go in the gym and do our parts.’ That was Smiley Smile. It was a real dip-out album. I’ve always said Smiley Smile was the bunt, and Smile was the home run. A lot of the same songs were on Smiley Smile but they didn’t sound the same at all. The melodies were similar, but the versions were more laid back. Maybe we’d do the melody, but nothing would be there of the original production. Brian just wanted to lighten up a bit, so he did Smiley Smile instead. He was trying to get away from the pretence of making a heavy art album. He had given up on it and didn’t want to know about it. So we just had fun.
   "I felt a little funny about Smiley Smile, because I felt we were dicking off, smoking too much pot and just laughing our asses off. After all this hype for Smile, Smiley Smile was such a dirty trick. And yet it was so great to see Brian having fun after he had been through so much. It was kind of a devilish thing to do, you know, hee-hee, making this silly little record out of this grand and beautiful project."

Another relevant bit from Carl: "Brian was really encouraging us to write more. His actions were telling us, ‘Why don’t you go ahead and write; come forward now.’ Just before 20/20, Brian told me, ‘Please, you got to take over and help me out; this is obviously not the thing I want to do now.’"

Will’s comment suggests that “Surf’s Up” was looked at for possible inclusion on the LP, but what becomes crucial for verifyig that is the timing of the session (there is no confirmed date listed at Bellagio). Will seems to tie it to a mid-November time frame adjacent to “Country Air” (toward the end of the LP sessions) but other sources suggest that it was cut earlier than that, quite possibly before the “Wally Heider intervention.”

That date is crucial for understanding what Brian’s intentions were for the song. It seems rather incongruous that “Surf’s Up” would fit in on WILD HONEY, and it seems even more implausible to think that with most of the R&B-oriented tracks recorded by mid-November, Brian would seriously consider it for the LP.

My hunch is that this is/was some kind of cover story created after the fact to deflect inquiry about the internecine “after-struggle” between Brian and the rest of the band regarding his creative priorities. The tape of the solo piano version of "Surf's Up" that I've heard doesn't indicate that Carl was present when Brian recorded it, but if there is some more solid evidence proving that, then my speculation about the reasons for its brief revival will have to be abandoned. However it just makes more sense (given the July Engemann memo) that this was an early October tape where Brian was reacquainting himself with the song after it being mothballed for ten months.

Definitely, without question recorded the same day as Country Air, which was November 14. The timing suggests that it might have been done to fill out the one extra song quota that Mama Says handled instead. Carl was present and helped produce.

As for the onset of Brian’s psychological issues, the igniting incident was clearly seeded from the cumulative set of events that consumed him in the latter stages of the SMiLE sessions, but it appears that the full breakdown occurred after the unsuccessful attempt to finish “Can’t Wait Too Long” in late July 1968. This is a case where Brian never did figure out how to turn the song into something analogous to “Good Vibrations” (in the sense of it being a grand, superseding “comeback” effort that could scale the charts in a similar fashion).

My read on Been 'Way Too Long (as it was called at the time because they couldn't decide on the title) isn't at all that Brian set out to make another Good Vibrations. I think it's the other way around, that maybe Brian got scared and jumped ship because he'd wanted to do something simple and realised he was turning it into Heroes and Villains writ small. A pull quote from Bruce that July frames it as the progressive response to Do It Again, at least in the eyes of Bruce. For Brian, I don't know how much he was weighing on this song because nobody's ever talked about it, but you can hear a fusion of a lot of what had worked for him in the past year - the Beach Boy R&B of Wild Honey, the instrumentation of Friends, the darker moods he was getting into in the summer of '68, the Do It Again delay module, etc. But it wasn't a complicated song. They only worked on it for a week, and in that time Brian kept rearranging and reworking parts at manic pace until interrupted by another tour. The group became unavailable to work on it, then Brian's interest and enthusiasm waned. His mental state was already low at that time; I don't think he approached it as the massive comeback window or spiralled into a breakdown over a recording project.

By the way, how much interest is there in the actual facts regarding dates and documents and when splices were made, etc? I would think that would be right up the alley of every Smile fan on earth, but I've been surprised to see a lot of the info, which has been revealed here for the first time, completely ignored! Brian splicing the Worms verse from Worms (which he'd otherwise just chopped up for Heroes) and planning to use it as an intro for the original Da Da, via notes on the tape box? I thought that would get a big reaction!

Putting aside the debates regarding contemporary quotes and what they mean re Smile's transition into Smiley Smile, I'm surprised that most of the new information that's being given in this thread from original documents is kind of getting washed over. That's the part that fascinates me the most - the music, and exactly how, when, and where it was made. Through that, Brian's rapidly changing plans can be traced, as can his increasing interesting in minimal tracks, and instruments that are stacked by himself, rather than played by a live ensemble.

Im still catching up on everything Ive missed here over the last 10 years but Id love to see more revelations like this. I can't say it means I'll change the tracklist on my fanmixes (I just don't see how Worms-Verse/Dada and the '67 single version of Heroes sound better than Worms-Proper, personally)but I'd love to know what other kooky remixes Brian had in mind and if there are dates involved it'd be a great insight to how the project evolved. Anyone have a master list and/or source for how this all came to light?

Damn, this is why I'm afraid to check out the start of this thread and see what was written three years ago. That one was a premature call that I'm also part responsible for. Brian does make a "let's put them together" comment at the end of the master for the first version of Da Da recorded 12/22/66. We thought for a time that this was directed to a transfer of Worms Part 1 made right before it on the same reel, but the tracksheet provides the context that he was probably talking about splicing two incomplete Da Da takes together - which he then did, but it's inaudible and undetectable unless you're watching the splice fly by on the 8-track machine.

Edit: Turns out I actually do still agree with 95% of the info I wrote on page 11. Phew!

When I think of Smile as a project with a musical vision, I think of a journey that flies around across the continent, back in time, in and out of side doors, wherever it wants. Lots of miniature worlds and sonic palettes. When I think of Smiley Smile, I think of that little house in the woods on the cover. It's much more a chamber piece, one of those albums glued together by a musical 'setting', like Party, or even Pet Sounds. That's a big part of the vibe shift to me beyond all the material practicalities of recording. It's adjusting focus from AMERICA (in big bold letters) to whatever's going on with the bugs in the garden. I think the extent Brian compartmentalised his music can be overstated by some but it definitely had its place in his head. He liked being a deliberate album craftsman.

@Joshilyn Hoisington

When is your book coming out, or has it, is it part of the new David Leaf book on SMiLE? I googled your name but I didn't see anything come up. I know it takes awhile to get a book published so maybe even in the 3 years since you mentioned it, it hasn't gotten done yet but I'd love to see something like that!

I disagreed with your take on SMiLE as a fixed album earlier but beyond that I've agreed with what you and sloopjohnb were saying...about 10 pages back   I really want to know more about what the hard data reveals. Im still interested in SMiLE but at this point Im kinda fed up with the way discussion always gets derailed by speculative fan theory back-imposed as fact. Im sure some will say Ive been guilty of that too, and maybe I have been, but I always tried to give weight to what was on-tape and documented over what Brian said in an interview decades later, what the online consensus is, what BWPS does, etc. It's kind of infuriating trying to seek the truth, disappointing though it may be (IE "I think these Psychedelic Sounds chants are as close as we're gonna get to a vintage Water and Air, guys") only to get some self-appointed keeper of the tale telling you ("nah man, Surf's Up is totally water because it has surf in the title; did you even read LLVS bro?") It's a big reason why I stepped aside from this forum in '15 and honestly rereading the middle section of this thread is giving me serious deja vu vibes. Not trying to pick on anyone in particular; I think we all go through a phase where we latch onto the SMiLE myth, build up a "perfect" vision for it in our heads and don't want to let go, but for those of us who now just want the hard documented evidence, a solidly researched book would be nice.

All that said, I think there's room for balance. The historicity of the sessions, vintage test edits, contemporaneous primary sources, etc should be carefully guarded against unfounded hearsay and respected as the closest word to what happened. Absolutely. But also when it comes to analyzing the "meaning" of the songs and what they make individual listeners feel, or the message that might tie them in with other material from the sessions...let people have their fun. (Not that you weren't, just making a general point.) It bugs me how, in the past, if I tried to throw out a fun idea for CIFOTM maybe signifying America surpassing Europe in geopolitical prominence and now protecting them as a father would a child, I get told "we don't have lyrics, you're passing off unfounded speculation as fact!!!" as if I did something wrong, just trying to have fun and think of what it might've meant. Or saying Wonderful might be about how to "have" an innocent girl is to take her innocence and therefore diminish the beauty you were seeking, which ties into CE and to explore the West meant defiling its pristine tranquility with noisy railroads, somehow makes me "creepy."

I don't know, maybe Im rambling and being inconsistent. I think there's a time and place for fun undocumented speculation and disciplined archeology so to speak, and a lot of commenters (perhaps including myself) don't seem to know where to draw the line, which is what leads to a lot of consternation between people on this forum.

If Joshilyn doesn't see this one I can answer. Her, John Brode, Craig Slowinski (who compiled the official Smile sessionography in 2011 among lots of others) and I are all working on a recording sessions sort of book in several volumes. Have been at it for years, will probably still be at it for years. It's only about Smile to the same degree that it's about everything else from the beginning, so it'll take a while to get there. We've just started talking through a plan to mitigate that by getting an appendices/companion of sorts online with information that'll be out of Vol 1's reach - setting sights on later this year slash 2026 for a revised Pet Sounds/Smile/Smiley Smile coverage in time for the 60th anniversary.

The sources of those cancelled 3/28 and 3/30 dates are a couple of AFM contracts submitted to pay the musicians because the bookings were called off without a 7 day notice period. Neither have a title - that's just an assumption about what Brian might've planned to do because he was back in the studio a week later recording Vegetables. Both sessions would've employed Hal Blaine, Gene Estes, Carol Kaye, Bill Pitman, and Lyle Ritz.

March 1 is the last time Van Dyke was paid for a session and the last time he's heard on tape. Not to say that he couldn't have been hanging around socially in April, but there's a lot of candid material on those tapes and he isn't heard anywhere, or mentioned by participants in the many colourful Vegetables anecdotes set at Sound Recorders. The only credible evidence that Van Dyke was around for Vegetables comes from him telling Domenic Priore, "I recall being at the instrumental recording of it, but I don’t recall being in the vocal." At best that's quite ambiguous, given that the song was both recorded in fall '66 and spring '67. Or he could've been a one-off silent visitor watching Brian cut the tag at Gold Star. There's nothing solid, basically. Any author putting a definitive date on a exit for him is just fishing for a neat and tidy answer that doesn't exist.

Nothing in the public sphere I'm afraid.

There were four 1/4" reels recorded November 4, 1966 following the Surf's Up session.
1. Dialogue
2. More dialogue
3. The "Psychodelic Sounds" skits and chants, Heroes and Villains played for Harvey Miller.
4. Sound effects copied over from Vosse's NAGRA reels. These include the Chicago cab driver, hosepipe sounds, basketball game, etc.

Again, I'm willing to believe you, pretty much everything you say makes intuitive sense to me, but I'd just appreciate a definitive source is all. I don't know the names of all the band's various partners, friends and confidants through the decades as many other posters do (terrible with names and I admit my focus is more limited to SMiLE than most), so if you are an insider who's seen this evidence for yourself firsthand, just say the word and I'll take your testimony at face value. Otherwise, I'd just appreciate something I can point to if I ever parrot this info in the future beyond "someone on a forum told me..."

I do appreciate it and your contributions in any case  

Yes, I've either seen/heard this material firsthand or know those who do have direct access to it and can describe it in detail, haha. I don't mean to come across as ambiguous!

Will, what is the time frame in 1968 when Brian was hospitalized due to emotional issues? My recollection is that it happened at the tail end of the year, not so shortly after the work done on the two SMiLE tracks that wound up on 20/20.

No idea, honestly. If it's true, and I don't doubt it, could've been any time in the latter half of '68. Your guess is as good as mine.

Even if it's "wrong" though, do you think this mistake might've influenced IIGS' "eggs and grits" verse's place on BWPS as an intro to IWBA? Seems to fit the pattern of bootlegs, fan mixes and misdirection bleeding into the final product that we see in a lot of that project's tracklist anyway.

I think it might have, yeah. Those connections were being made among fans long before all of the tapes were heard. That definitely influenced Frank Holmes' artwork for the title in the 90s.

For this, I'm going to require a bit more from you. Because it isn't just Badman listing sessions as cancelled under specific track names but also AGD's Bellagio site.
http://www.bellagio10452.com/gigs67.html With two, let's call them "semi-reliable" sources at the very least, testifying to the same thing, I'd need to see something hefty in order to discount them both.

The sources of those cancelled 3/28 and 3/30 dates are a couple of AFM contracts submitted to pay the musicians because the bookings were called off without a 7 day notice period. Neither have a title - that's just an assumption about what Brian might've planned to do because he was back in the studio a week later recording Vegetables. Both sessions would've employed Hal Blaine, Gene Estes, Carol Kaye, Bill Pitman, and Lyle Ritz.

Again, I'm willing to believe you over the book and certainly VDP's coming and going back and forth doesn't make much intuitive sense to me, but I would like to know how you're so sure if you don't mind. Even just a half-remembered "pretty sure I read this in X book" would be very appreciated so I could weigh sources, please.

March 1 is the last time Van Dyke was paid for a session and the last time he's heard on tape. Not to say that he couldn't have been hanging around socially in April, but there's a lot of candid material on those tapes and he isn't heard anywhere, or mentioned by participants in the many colourful Vegetables anecdotes set at Sound Recorders. The only credible evidence that Van Dyke was around for Vegetables comes from him telling Domenic Priore, "I recall being at the instrumental recording of it, but I don’t recall being in the vocal." At best that's quite ambiguous, given that the song was both recorded in fall '66 and spring '67. Or he could've been a one-off silent visitor watching Brian cut the tag at Gold Star. There's nothing solid, basically. Any author putting a definitive date on a exit for him is just fishing for a neat and tidy answer that doesn't exist.

I don't doubt it but where, on YouTube? Was it in the booklet that comes with TSS? (I own a copy but haven't read it in a long time--I'll be sure to soon though, since my interest in SMiLE has been reignited!)

Nothing in the public sphere I'm afraid.

Besides the two questionable anecdotes I mentioned in my first reply to you, the other thing I notice is those lost Psychedelic Sounds tracks don't seem to be referenced anywhere else and if they really were on the "same tape" as the others from November it just doesn't make sense why they'd be left off. Were they so boring that even the person who released Psychedelic Sounds said "nah, nobody needs to hear this" or was there some cussing or hidden homophobic rant that would've hurt the band's image? Just doesn't jive with me, but also it'd be such a ridiculous thing for Badman to make up out of nowhere.

There were four 1/4" reels recorded November 4, 1966 following the Surf's Up session.
1. Dialogue
2. More dialogue
3. The "Psychodelic Sounds" skits and chants, Heroes and Villains played for Harvey Miller.
4. Sound effects copied over from Vosse's NAGRA reels. These include the Chicago cab driver, hosepipe sounds, basketball game, etc.