Thanks for making this, it's definitely interesting to hear! Though I must say I think there's a reason this idea didn't seem to get very far.... It sort of almost works? but definitely not quite!

Paradise Found is a rather lovely track. A minor classic in the weird, limited world of early 80s Beach Boy music.

Definitely the best song on the album. Either that or "Be My Baby" but I don't know if I'd call it a minor classic. A pretty good song though.

I kind of like Paradise Found. There's something weirdly satisfying about "Looking Back with Love," the song, too. Like there's a decent song trying to get out, and not quite making it... but then that smooth 80s production almost makes up for it, but not quite... Be My Baby, on the other hand... I dunno, I know Brian had a hand in it, but unlike some of the other 70s and 80s Specter covers, it just doesn't work for me. It's light years away from the covers on 15 Big Ones... and when you're falling way short of the *covers on 15 Big Ones*, I mean, at that point you're making some pretty bad music......

I found this post from sloopjohnb72 (which is buried somewhere in the depths of Liz's epic Smile thread) extremely enlightening!

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.

Which got me thinking... has anyone ever made a visual timeline of the session history for Smile? A nice informative way to seeing what version of what songs were worked on when, and for how long, and when they just stopped completely. I make a very primitive mockup how it could look (apologies for wrong dating but you get the idea ) Something like August 1966 to June 1967 Across the top x axis, and the list of smile-related songs across the y axis, whether it's in appearance order, or track order, abc order, whatever. And then followed by colored bars going horizonally for start and stop dates (august to october, etc) . It could be separated into the different versions (Wonderful ver 1, Wonderful ver 2 Rock with me, Vegetables (demo), Da-Da Taped strings, and so on) And if you wanted to break it down even more, have actual days like Aug 12 - Sept 22.

Id be happy to assist or even set up the table is someone wanted to provide the information!

I would love to see something like this, and I imagine you could make a pretty effective start just using the information in the sessionography that came with the Smile box set....but it would be a whole pile of work for sure!

Well, the two tapes are literally spliced together. Bicycle Rider was cut from the complete assembly of Worms (literally cut, with a razor), and pasted after the verse of Heroes and Villains, which came on the same tape reel.

When you say complete assembly of Worms, was this edited together as a potential finished backing track, or is it just the pieces lined up on one reel?

The backing track pieces for Worms were dubbed to a second generation 4-track and edited together at the initial session. Vocals were overdubbed onto the full edited composite track, much like Good Vibrations, which isn't the approach Brian took with most of the rest of the Smile material. It was later copied to 8-track for more work, and that's the tape where Bicycle Rider has been spliced out and edited onto the Heroes verses.

A mono reel from December 27 (which is missing from the box, but what was on it survives via acetates) contained the Cabin Essence chorus, two mixes of Bicycle Rider, and the Heroes opening verses. The contents are listed as:
1 - PORTION OF CABINESSENCE (WHO RAN THE IRON HORSE)
2 - PORTION OF HEROES AND VILLAINS (BICYCLE RIDERS) ['(INDIANS)' crossed out]
3 - same as 2
4 - PORTION OF HEROES AND VILLAINS - OPENING

Intentions with the CE chorus aren't completely clear, but Vosse did make a muddled comment about Brian wanting to put Bicycle Rider and Iron Horse together at some point. Likely the next day, Brian recorded "Heroes and Villains Part 3" (on the face of it would naturally follow "Part 2", aka Bicycle Rider) which is more or less a reworking of the Iron Horse music.

Okay, follow up question (I meant to ask this at the time and never got around to it) - if I wanted to hear a reconstruction of that initial Worms track, ideally both with and without the vocals, as it stood before Brian spliced out Bicycle Rider, where would I look? Is such a thing on the Smile Sessions box?

I mostly agree with you except for VT - you can't dismiss the 'Elements' link from the booklet its such strong evidence.

I don't dismiss it at all, I think it's a wash. The booklet is strong evidence, yes, but, to my mind, the tracklist is equally strong evidence the other way. Why would you list *just one single element* separately on your track list, but combine the others? Then again, why would the booklet say "'My  Vege-Tables' the Elements" if it wasn't part of the elements? Depending how the dates line up, it does make one wonder if the Elements started out as a more general conceptual idea that encompassed songs about vegetables and wind chimes, and then at some point evolved into a the famous suite that would have been its own song?

Also I agree the water thing was a concept rather than a song/track but its a solid concept:  at that point he was going to 'sample' water to make a tune and they even had the 'samples' recorded. 

I know, and it's a concept with so much potential too!

I definitely agree it was all morphing.  I don't think my suggestion was anything concrete as he got spooked and seemingly dumped Fire so that was rapidly in and out.

Yea, pieces in motion for sure!

I definitely see the logic to what you're suggesting...but I'm not sure it's so cut and dry. The thing is, with a lot of the songs we can point to a moment when there was a clear intention of what the song would be: Wonderful and Wind Chimes were set aside as masters, before Brian returned to them and rerecorded. Cabinessence, Do You Like Worms, or Surf's Up all had a set structure and were substantially recorded in a basically coherent way. But other songs were moving targets. Heroes and Villains, for example, was one thing in November, another in December, another in February. When is as important a question as what. I think the Elements is in the latter category. Yes, all the pieces you lay out make sense individually, but did they ever co-exist as a complete idea called "The Elements?" I don't think there is definitive evidence either way.

As for Vegetables being Earth, I have always thought the two songs being listed separately on the back cover is *slightly* stronger evidence that Vegetables wasn't part of the Elements than the booklet is that it was, since a track list, to my mind, has a little bit more authority than artwork, though they're both packaging.

Honestly, I think the Elements remains the biggest question mark in the whole project, because other than Fire and Vegetables, the ideas you lay out are concepts, not songs. What would found audio of water at different pitches have turned into if Brian had actually made a serious effort to turn it into music? Given how creative Brian Wilson was when he set his mind to finishing something, I think it's just impossible to know. Likewise, *all* Brian's songs start out as piano pieces. All that Brian quote about Air being a piano piece tells us is that Brian had composed something, but who knows where it would have gone in the studio. It's like--imagine if Fire hadn't been recorded, and all we knew about it was that Brian had composed a piece representing a fire, that all the musicians were  going to wear fire hats, and that Brian planned to light a fire in a bucket during the session and record that too. That wouldn't really tell us *anything* about what Fire actually was. We might well lock onto the "recording a real fire" part and think it was going to be a lot of found sounds. And we wouldn't even be able to *imagine* that Brian would then record "rebuilding" with power tools and hammers! That's where earth, air, and water are to me. Concepts, not songs, but thinking we understand what the elements would have been because we know the concept is as impossible as it would be to figure out what Heroes and Villains was if it had never been recorded and all we knew about it was the title and that it was about the old west!

Well, the two tapes are literally spliced together. Bicycle Rider was cut from the complete assembly of Worms (literally cut, with a razor), and pasted after the verse of Heroes and Villains, which came on the same tape reel.

When you say complete assembly of Worms, was this edited together as a potential finished backing track, or is it just the pieces lined up on one reel?

Perhaps irrationally, my definitive City Blues is the Richie Sambora version from one of those Brian tribute shows. I youtube it everyonce in a while, and every time I'm like... yea, I like it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y26yxO-fQbk

Also Solomon Burke's version of Soul Searchin' hits the spot. Have that on a few summer mixes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07lD2qTpayA

I think some of Brian's solo material, and this album and imagination in particular, are full of songs that are not quite brilliant enough to withstand the treatment they got, but are actually beneath the surface songs way beyond what the average songwriter is capable of, and are just dying to be covered. I'm totally off-topic by now, but Cry is one that I'd just love to hear reach it's full potential.

I think, too - even though it's obviously a totally different situation - that that Tony Bennett 60 minutes segment about his farewell shows that went viral a couple years ago is pretty instructive. In the video, you see that Tony Bennett's alzheimers had advanced to the point where he couldn't really remember, well, anything... and yet he could go out and do a 60 minute set at Radio City Music Hall, knew all the songs, recognize people on stage in a way he couldn't at home, and really be his old self for an evening... and then a couple days later not even remember it happened! The point being that music is powerful, powerful stuff. I think that sometimes because Mike's taste differs so much from the taste of most hardcore fans, we forget that he still clearly *loves* the music. Mike's a cornball and always has been, but I don't think he's a cynic. I think he just really does like the car songs and the cheerleaders and the Ra Ra Ra thing, that's his taste. But he's a very musical person, who's always had a very strong musical sensibility of his own, in terms of the aesthetic he likes, his vocals, his lyrics, and I guess it's just pretty easy for me to imagine that the Mike we're seeing on stage is the real Mike Love, as real as it gets, and that the Mike Love that would be sitting around his mansion watching TV would be, you know, not the person he wants to be. And I think something similar is true of Brian. I saw the Something Great in '68 tour just before the pandemic with my partner (it was an *amazing* show, even though Brian's participation was already a little less than it had been a few years earlier), and her comment about it as a fan (but not nearly so intense a fan as me), was that, yea, his vocals weren't always so enthusiastic, but she thought it looked like Brian just really wanted to sit on stage and be surrounded by his music and that that had got to be so special.

Truly, it is fascinating that both Mike and Bruce don't seem to have any interest in taking the sunset years of their lives and relaxing on a more extended basis and having more time to enjoy their large houses and gold plated toilets or whatever it is they've got going on. They seem happy to schlepp across the country (and around the world) and just take a few weeks here and there at home. They seem happy spending more time on airplanes and in hotel rooms than in those mansions and non-mansion mansions. I don't know that it's admirable per se, but it's interesting and fascinating.

I mean, we're not talking about retiring from the insurance industry, here! These are rock stars! Last month they played the Royal Albert Hall. So far as I can tell--and to Mike Love's credit--it just never got old for him. He wants to be out on stage singing his hits and doing his bits and signing autographs and hearing the crowd cheer, and I mean, I don't think I'd want to give that up either, if I were him!

True, I was looking more at overall productivity than looking at successful solo albums. I have a lower bar I suppose when it comes to rating solo albums in some cases, and in most cases if they can get the album released and it has some good moments, I rate that as a relative success. Carl's albums for instance are kind of bland, but I rate them as successful in that it kept him busy, he sounded good, some of the songs were solid, and it showed a path he could have continued to follow and evolve. Same with Al's solo album. Even some of Mike's stuff. Certainly Dennis. Brian has of course been far more productive than the rest.

But, then we also have to say, depending on how we define success, that very, very few of any their solo albums, including Brian's, have been hugely successful critically or commercially. Some have done well with critics, and some in retrospect have seen greater appreciation. A few have had decent chart showings. And of course nobody ever generated a hit single. The closest they probably came to that was Celebration's "Almost Summer."

I think, especially as time goes by, and especially as we get into delving into the archives of 70s material, that it doesn't do anybody a lot of favors to downplay the talents of the other members. I think it's totally possible to subscribe to Dennis's assertion that "Brian is the Beach Boys", and also, without just blowing smoke and stroking egos in an unwarranted fashion, look at what we can maybe call some "genius aspects" to the other members as well. I don't think anybody, short of sometimes Mike and sort of Bruce, think anybody in the group's orb has ever been as talented as Brian. But they brought some genius moments to the table. Howie Edelson has recently spoken a lot about Mike's bass part on "San Miguel", and I think he has a number of moments like that. I think all of the guys do.

I think all of the guys, especially Dennis, Carl, and Al; their biggest flaw was how much they didn't tap into their talent and genius, and or didn't follow through on it. Al has had an amazing voice for decades, and he did almost NOTHING with it after being s**tcanned from the touring band in 1998. He should have had five albums out by 2012. Carl should have been asking Tom Petty to co-write stuff and convince Rick Rubin to produce him. Dennis obviously needed to get relatively clean and he could have produced a lot more.

I think a big part of this, tragically, is that Dennis and Carl, well, they just literally didn't make it through what were, for almost all the acts that hit it big in the 60s, the wilderness years. It's a huge generalization, yea, but it's also kind of obvious that the late 70s through the early 90s were a hard time for that whole generation of artists. Look at someone like Dylan - through the mid-to-late 70s he was still pretty much firing on all cylinders in a way that makes myths about the magic dying at the end of the 60s look kind of ridiculous to those of us who didn't live through it! Likewise, the Beach Boys through 1974; John, Paul, George, and even Ringo well into the 70s; and a host of other bands. By the late 70s into the 80s, with disco thriving than inspiring a huge backlash and punk drawing really directly on the spirit of bands like the Beach Boys but in a way those artists clearly couldn't identify with or understand, a lot of those artists were having trouble figuring out what their identity should be. They were still really young guys (Carl Wilson was like 34 in 1980, which should be prime years for anyone) but they obviously couldn't quite figure out how to use their talent and fit into the broader culture in the 80s. I mean, we take it for granted that all these 60s bands made kind of shitty music in the 80s, but there's really no reason that should have had to be true.

By the late 80s and early 90s, more and more artists were finding their way. The Traveling Wilburys were an important moment, I think, a band that managed to preserve its integrity, sound kind of timeless, but also fit into its moment. Dylan obviously roared back in the 90s. Rick Rubin and Johnny Cash provided another model for how to balance commercial success and artistic integrity as you aged. The Beach Boys participated in this moment too, of course, you get the Don Was documentary, the Paley Sessions, the Like a Brother project... but the band politics is so complicated that they don't quite manage to seize the moment in the mid-90s. And then Carl dies, which means that Brian has to do it on its own. He does! Brian Wilson's solo career post-1999 is a perfect example of a legendary 60s artist figuring out how to move forward while honoring their legacy. But I really suspect that if Carl had lived longer he would have embraced a world where Brian was creatively active and the music was taken way more seriously and the Mike Love approach would have been totally sidelined, but Carl got sick at the beginning of what we now call "legacy artists" figuring out how to navigate no longer being the center of the musical universe without cheapening their accomplishments or drowning in nostalgia. He just didn't get the chance for a second act.

That show without him and the girls did go ahead after all. And from videos and reports, it still seems like it was a great time overall. There are plenty of BB/J&D tribute bands made up of current/past touring members, with this one being essentially a Cal Saga show, and all of those groups are outta sight. Looks like Matthew and Randell were leaders in making the show go on. Kudos to all of those musicians: the music sounded great and they made the best of a difficult situation.

Can someone point me towards the videos of this show? Just a little curious about how it went down!

Returning a few days later to say: I'm never going to be able to unhear those ukuleles when this song comes on! They're super clear, even in the mono mix. Not that I ever noticed them before! Also that amazing countermelody the guitar (and later one of the horns) plays in the second half of the chorus. So cool! Also, this will surprise no one, but I think it's kind of cool that (according to a brief youtube survey), that guitar part was never played live by the Beach Boys, but the Brian Wilson Band always seems to have someone audibly on it!

I’m not sure where the assertion that the water chant was to be used as the fade of the Wild Honey Cool Cool Water comes from.  Is that on a tape box or on a session slate?

The chant where they all sing "water, water" over a drone is not a recording that was made for a song called Love to Say Da Da. As we said earlier, it is labeled as "Cool Cool Water - Fade" on the tape box, and was recorded in Brian's home studio using his Baldwin organ during either the Smiley Smile era or the Wild Honey era. It is a section of Cool Cool Water that was recorded under that name.

This is soooo cool! Really unbelievable! It's so much fun to see all the pieces coming together. Also very clever video editing, I love how it cuts to the drums for those snare hits! Somehow seeing the instruments visually makes it easier to hear how they interact. Like, you can really hear what the ukuleles are adding, and the way that the two basses playing together create a distinctive sound that on the original record is totally there but is somehow harder to place. Nothing is extra.

but it’s a rare case I think even if it took 35+ years, the “Smile” ball of wax was finally rolled out in pretty much ideal fashion.

Honestly Brian's entire career since 2000 has been rolled out in pretty much ideal fashion, in my opinion. Truly the amount of great music that man put into the world between ages 58 and 78 or so is just astonishing and miraculous. And then to have things like Love & Mercy being one of the greatest movies ever made about the creative process, the memoir actually being super good, all these incredible box sets. It's really unbelievable.

Basically I think my hard-headed perspective on this stems from some fans just not believing that BWPS is the finished product (which is sadly something I have read far too often in the fandom)...a perspective that I just don't understand. The way I see it, if Beethoven started a symphony in his 20s, shelved it, then completed it towards the end of his life, 400 years later we wouldn't say "well did he really finish that symphony though?" We wouldn't question it because clearly Beethoven has the final authority on what he completes/finalizes. So why is Brian Wilson any different?

Also BJL, all of the above isn't really in response to your post as I do agree with your post and I don't think we disagree about anything. The above comments are more aimed at those who just don't see BWPS as Smile. Your post just made me want to clarify my position on the topic.

Yea, I agree with this. I've never been a huge fan of Brian Wilson Presents Smile (in terms of like, choosing to listen to it), but I couldn't count the number of times I've watched the live Smile DVD. Seeing Brian perform his *completed* Smile with a huge smile on his face! My god. It is a shame that the instrumentation Smile is scored for is probably too unusual for it to enter the contemporary classic repertoire, because that is a *composition* that works so, so, so well in performance!

Just an observation, but I think the biggest thing hurting BWPS's status as *the* Smile is Brian's lead vocals. If Brian had followed a more normal vocal trajectory, and his voice at 62 had been basically the same voice he sang with at 25, just a little richer and deeper, than its status would be much more assured. But obviously, this has nothing to do with how completed the music is, its more just like...an unconnected fact that can't help coloring the experience of listening.

The question on the push back against Da Da being used within water is one I'd like to understand the answer to.  

At risk of beating a dead horse, I’m going to take the bait here and restate what I think has been said in this thread so far about Love to Say Da Da. Frankly, I continue to find this conversation *incredibly* compelling.

In this thread, we learned two dramatic new (to me, anyway!) *facts* about Love to Say Da Da. We learned these fact from tape boxes and the tapes inside of them. No, tape boxes are not the be all and end all of historical information, but, at the same time, they can be a very useful source of *certain kinds* of facts.

Those two facts are, first, that the first version of Love to Say Da Da, recorded in December, was edited onto a tape with the verse of Do You Like Worms, shortly after Brian Wilson had cut the chorus of Do You Like Worms out of the song to use in Heroes and Villains. There ends the fact itself. However, this fact *strongly* suggests that Love to Say Da Da was originally conceived as a discrete song of its own, not as the water section of the Elements.

Now, this fact has led us, collectively, in this thread, to some very interesting new ideas about this song. First, that Love to Say Da Da was probably not conceived as the water section of the elements (and no, we cannot know for sure!), does *not* mean that the song is not associated with water as a theme, but given that I, and many other people, had long assumed that Love to Say Da Da was almost *certainly* explicitly the water section of the elements, it is very, very interesting information.

Secondly, the quotes and ideas that a variety of members have assembled on this board strongly suggest three sets of associations for Love to Say Da Da in December: first, with babies, the “cycle of life” idea, second with water, and third with *Hawaii!* This is a place where the stuff Liz and Angela are saying is actually I think even *more* interesting than they’ve realized. Because, yes, Marilyn’s quote definitely implies a strong connection to babies, and the Hawaiian chant sounds like baby talk. *But* Do You Like Worms is, of course, strongly associated with Hawaii, and if Love to Say Da Da was originally connected to Do You Like Worms, than the Hawaii connection—and the water connection—are incredibly compelling!

The second fact, which, again, was very, very surprising to me, was that the “Water” chant which has been edited onto the beginning of Love to Say Da Da since at least the 90s, was actually not a Smile recording at all. It was recorded in Brian’s home studio to be the *fade* to Cool Cool Water either during the Smiley Smile or Wild Honey sessions. This is a *mind-blowing* discovery to me. Again, this doesn’t mean that there is no association at all between Love to Say Da Da and the idea of water. But it just changes the relationship of those last Smile sessions to the themes and ideas Brian was working with in 1967. It opens up a lot of room for conversation, speculation, theorizing, and wondering.

I agree with guitarfool and others that there are some moments in this thread where the individuals pointing out these new facts were a bit overbearing. But at the same time, these two new facts, learned from tape boxes, have opened up a fascinating conversation. And when that quote about birth and the swimming pool being at body temperature was brought into the thread, explicitly connecting the idea of birth and babies with the idea of water, in an authentic quote from 1966 just days away from the Love to Say Da Da sessions - I mean, that’s the kind of stuff I live for! That is incredible! New information, new facts, lead to new ways of looking at the evidence, new theories, and new ideas. That’s what I see happening in this thread and I love it!!!

The thing that's so wild to me is the inconsistency *within* a single performance. Sometimes it almost feels like his younger voice is locked up in his chest, struggling to get out. To take just one example, there's a moment in the Queen Mary performance of Sloop John B (song is at 6:00 in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i8BA4OMr2w), where Brian starts the song, and he's doing a pretty good job, I guess, but he's got that wooden face and slightly off delivery we're now so used to, but then on the words "we did roam" he just hits that word roam so sweetly and then immediately smiles. There's something about it that I just find very effecting, even though I'm probably reading way to much into it!

This isn’t science, the answer is not ‘no’ until it is proven, the answer is ‘we don’t know’.

That is sure true and something we all have to remember!

And my questions about Love to Say Da Da should probably have been broken out into their own thread, which I would do now except I think we've settled it

edit: I'm deleting what I posted here because it wasn't about the music. Sorry if anybody had invested time in responding to it. I don't think there was anything uncalled for or mean in it, but I love this conversation and I really like Liz *and* Sloopjohnb72 and think everyone is saying interesting and valuable things and there's no reason for me to have made a long post that wasn't about the music! Thanks everyone for making this thread so cool!

Objectively, Love to Say Da Da was not considered to be the "water element" in Brian's 1966-67 recordings, but also, In Blue Hawaii is presented as the "water element" on BWPS (although it's not explicitly stated as such). At some point long before BWPS was constructed, this interpretation of LTSDD as water came to be among fans.

I have a sincere question about this. Do you think that the evidence you're looking at actually shows that Love to Say Da Da was *not* considered to be the "water element?" Or does it just show that *there is no evidence* that Love to Say Da Da was the water element? Because *eventually* that music became associated with water, so merely in the absence of evidence, we wouldn't necessarily know when that association started in Brian's mind. Does that make sense?

While I was thinking about this I had a fun thought. We know that across Brian's career he constantly reused ideas. It definitely seems like more often than not, if Brian landed on a chord progression or feel or idea he liked, he'd quite possibly find a home for it eventually, maybe years later. Which made me think about that famous quote about "air" being a piano piece he never recorded. Given how we know Brian worked, doesn't it seem more likely than not that if Brian composed something he liked enough to include in his conception of the Elements, that eventually he probably would have come back to those ideas in some way shape or form and used them somewhere? And if you accept that, than it's more likely than not that we *have* heard the Air music. We just don't *know* we've heard it. We have know way of knowing where it ended up! It could be hiding anywhere, on any album from 1967 to the Paley Sessions!

Just a thought that tickled me

I think the most clear and honest explanation of what happened to Smile might be what came straight from the horse's mouth when Brian talked about it in Jan '68: "We pulled out of that production pace merely because I was about ready to die. Y'know, I was trying so hard. And all of a sudden, I just decided not to try anymore, y'know, and not do such great things, and such big musical things. And we had so much fun. The Smiley Smile era was so great, it was unbelievable - personally, spiritually, everything. It was great. I didn't have any paranoiac feelings. No paranoia."

Brian's being sort of humble with the 'great things' line - we know from band members that he was still drilling them for hours on their vocal parts, producing everything at a very high level, and still creating complex, dynamic music that I wouldn't consider creatively diminished from what came before (and time has been very kind to Smiley Smile), but it's definitely a dramatic change in tone if not technical production approach, or the way he arranged things, which had been gradually brushing up to the essence of Smiley Smile over the previous months without quite making the leap to embracing that as an entire aesthetic. It's the laid-back, low-key, non-competitive thing. 'Music to cool out by'. Brian stopped chasing the charts and 'important music' acclaim from the rock press, dialled back his social circle to heal personal relationships in the family, and started making music efficiently and happily again for the first time since probably about October '66. Music that he wanted to make for himself, without the self-imposed pressure. There's another pretty enlightening quote from Brian in a magazine around March off the back of that lengthy stretch of Heroes sessions where he said he felt like he was "losing his talent", working harder than ever but getting less satisfying results. Carl also said more than once that Brian threw Smile away because he stopped getting any fulfilment out of it.

Mike has a quote in the Byron Preiss biography that I think does a really good job of understanding where he was at:

Brian took a benign, passive interest, instead of a dominating interest. At that time something had happened to his whole ego drive. It had been very powerful until the time of “Heroes and Villains’” release – he was about ready to come out with the Smile album and he was feeling very dynamic and creative and then something happened… chemically that completely shattered that – that made him the complete opposite…that made him want to withdraw… But he was always shy; he was too sensitive. There was a fine line and he went over that line… He was still creative though. Instead of Smile he did Smiley Smile. It was light, mellifluous, laid-back. It was dynamic in a passive sort of way, it was a revelation of where his psychology had gone to. It dropped out. He dropped out of that production race – the next big thing after Sgt. Pepper. Brian had lost interest in being aggressive and he went in the other direction – still creative, and different, but it wasn’t competitive.

Man these quotes are so great. Thanks! That Mike quote is especially interesting, for some reason.

I believe in a multiplicity of Smiles, and I have no interest in saying what is or is not legitimately Smile. Smile contains multitudes. Brian Wilson Presents Smile is absolutely, authentically, Smile. It sure as *hell* has a stronger claim to being Smile than the *imaginary version of Smile I, a fan, have created in my own mind!* And yet, it's also true that the Smile-of-the-mind which has been laid out in one of the multiple conversations that make up this long and polyphonic thread, is certainly more accurate, historically, to what Brian was aiming for in the fall of 1966 than Brian Wilson Presents Smile. These two facts are not in contradiction. They are just based on different ways of viewing the world. The historian versus the artist, perhaps, although it is certainly more complicated than that!

For what it's worth, the Smile that is most important to me, the most *real* Smile, the Smile closest to my heart, really, is the Smile Liz is talking about it, the Smile described by her tracklist! This, at least in my view, is the consensus-Smile of the 1990s. The Smile that Domenic Priore and countless other researchers and musicians put together through intensive effort, as they tried to understand and make sense of the bootlegs that were coming out in the last two decades of the 20th century. Those bootlegs, in turn, increasingly took on the shape of that research, until an album arose, in countless related permutations, that made musical and creative sense. This is the Smile I first encountered as a child. I think Liz is flat wrong that there is any possibility of this iteration of Smile representing something that existed in 1967. But I don't think Liz cares very much about that in the end. She is looking at all this from a different angle, and I'm *so* glad she shared her perspective here, because it is what seeded this whole amazing conversation; we've all been bouncing off of her provocations, and going in all kinds of interesting directions because of it. And if the parts of this thread that were the *most* interesting to me were, I suspect, the *least* interesting to Liz, well, that just says that we're two different people with different interests and different approaches to life and art.

As someone a few pages ago very insightfully pointed out, the 1990s Smile of countless bootlegs and Look, Listen, Vibrate, Smile (with Heroes and Villains up front and Cabinessence at the end of Side 1 and the elements leading us into Surf's Up), became an important model, in many respects, for Brian Wilson Presents Smile. And that fact, the fact of the original creator of the work incorporating aspects of the legend and incorporating some of the theories of fans into the work itself, is one of the most poetic and incredible facets of the whole Smile story. And then, in an even more poetic and cyclical and beautiful ending, the original 1966 and 67 recordings were edited into the rough template of Brian Wilson Presents Smile, becoming the first disc of the Smile Sessions. I suspect that the vast majority of future fans of this music will almost certainly start there, and get a version of Smile built on this whole incredible rich history. And that Smile, the 2011 Smile, is also legitimately Smile. It *is* Smile.

But there are other Smiles. What might Smile have been in December, 1966, that unknowable potential, is a Smile that obsesses me personally. This obsession leads me to a place of deep, deep interest in questions about what exactly was recorded when. Others here have little interest in this question, or don't even really see it as a question that makes sense, which is perfectly fine. But these Smiles are Smile too. What might Smile have been in March, 1967? What did Smile look like at the moment that it morphed into Smiley Smile? All these imaginary Smiles have worked their way into fan theories and fan mixes and bootlegs and contributed to the endless permutations of this music that make it such fertile and creative ground.