I think that the changing texture is of major consequence! This entire era is my favorite to study for many reasons, and that's one of them. Once Brian gets comfortable in his new studio setup, and begins using the Baldwin, the detuned grand, and other tools rather consistently, the recordings really gel with another, and it makes sense that the album didn't really get going until a general sound was found. I just happen to disagree that there's an exact moment where it all changes. When you say 30 minutes of Smile music, do you mean stuff like Cabin Essence, the bigger Heroes sections, Good Vibrations, My Only Sunshine, and other big productions? Or material like Cantina, the early Da Da, Vega-Tables, bridge to indians, mission pak, the Worms chorus, or other sections that involve just piano and vocals?

It's a wonderful bag of varied music, but there's a slow, gradual change toward the more intimate sound of Smiley, if you look at things chronologically. Vegetables in April had one session that involved an ensemble of session players - the rest was just a few keyboards and an upright! If you still think Brian couldn't have possibly cancelled the album called Smile until after he... cancelled the album called Smile... here's a list of the next few recordings that he did from scratch (not including overdubs to the Heroes verse and chorus, or Vegetables sections from April, which were done during this time period):

Love To Say Da Da (Part 1) - grand piano, tack piano, 6-string bass, bass, temple blocks, drums
Love To Say Da Da (Part 2) - grand piano, Hammond organ, electric guitars, 6-string bass, bass, drums, claves, clarinets, vocals
Love To Say Da Da (Second Day) - grand piano, upright piano, acoustic guitar, 6-string bass, upright bass, bongos, mark tree, piccolos
You're With Me Tonight (Version 1) - 2 electric basses, vocals
You're With Me Tonight (Version 2) - harpsichord, vocals
You're With Me Tonight (Version 3) - bass, upright bass, harpsichord, snaps, claps, vocals
Cool, Cool Water - harpsichord, vocals
Heroes And Villains: Children Were Raised - electric harpsichord, organ, vocals
Heroes And Villains: Barbershop - vocals
Vegetables (Unused Attempt) - grand piano, organ, bass
Vegetables - bass, tuned water jugs, celery, vocals
Little Pad - grand piano, organ, steel guitar, marimba, claves, ukulele, sound effects, vocals

Where exactly is the major change, after which things sounded nothing like anything they'd done before? It has to be exactly between 2 of these, right? Keep in mind that most of the stuff Brian had done until this point was not much more than piano and vocals for the past few months.

Those are good points, yes. I think one of the major differences is that most of the Smile recordings, or those recordings prior to June 1967, were recorded in professional studios with very well made, well-maintained equipment. Brian was going for advancement in recorded sound as much as he was trying new compositional techniques and unorthodox harmony and chord progressions in the genre he was in: pop music. The sound of the instrumentation itself will be radically different when you record instruments in a professional studio which was constructed and designed specifically for high-level acoustics and reflections. When you go from some of the best live rooms ever designed to a living room, and when you go from two studios with some of the finest echo chambers ever built to using an empty swimming pool as an echo chamber, the difference will be blatantly clear even to people who don't have trained ears for recorded sound. When you do group vocals in a grand studio like Columbia, then do group vocals in a living room and a shower stall, there will be a huge difference in sound. And when you go from using some of the finest working studio players in LA playing professionally maintained instruments to tapping basic beats on a bongo drum, playing "found" objects, and replacing a woodwind section with a Baldwin organ, people will notice it.

Also, and this one I think is huge in terms of comparing Smile to Smiley Smile, Brian's fastball was always how his group vocals sounded, how they were arranged, recorded, and mixed. Notice how Smiley Smile has plenty of group vocals, but they're almost all recorded "dry". Compared to his previous productions, they could be called "bone dry". When you alter a signature sound to that extent, and remove most of the wide reverbs, tape delays, and other appointments that cut through AM radio broadcasts and cheap record players, and replace it with dry vocals recorded in a dead room, it's removing one of the sonic hooks you've become known for.

It's a pretty radical shift, and all those things combined will absolutely change the texture and overall sonic imprint of any recording in comparison to previous releases. With Smiley Smile, the change was so drastic it's almost ridiculous to put Good Vibrations on Smiley, it sounds like two different bands entirely. The one at the height of recorded sound and production, and the other recording in a house.

You cannot state as fact that there is or was no dividing line between the two projects when the band themselves and most fans who can easily listen to what was done for Smile versus what was "started from scratch" for Smiley Smile make that separation between the two, and in the band's case they're on the record since 1967 saying as much. If the band and the creators saw them as different projects, do you purport to know something the band didn't know and Smile just seamlessly flowed into Smiley Smile and there was no difference?

That's your opinion, and it's fine to have that opinion and stick to it, but when you have music for Smile which sounds that much different than what's on Smiley Smile, and when the creation of that music changed as dramatically as it did from April into May '67 going into June, it's obvious there was a drastic change that involved more than moving sections around and swapping songs in and out. They started a new project in June 1967 with new parameters and working methods, remaking certain songs and adding new ones. I don't know how more basic of an observation that can be.

You're putting too much weight into the band's perceptions and giving fans too much power.  I would also say that the compulsion to think of Smile as its own, isolated phenomenon is to project a sort of Aristotelean hylomorphism onto this whole thing, when we're really playing a completely nominalist game.  There is simply no need to limit any particular recording to one absolute ontology; Wouldn't it Be Nice is part of Pet Sounds just as much as it it part of Stack-o-tracks.  Wonderful can be part of Smile just as much as it can be part of Smiley Smile.  Cabin Essence can be just as much a part of Dumb Angel as it was part of Smile.

In a sense, yes, we do know something different than the band did.  Unlike the band, we have a pretty nice set of retrospective data to analyze with the benefit of many extra years of context.  We can know exactly when Cabin Essence was no longer a candidate for the new album, for example.  We can track with a lot of accuracy the evolution of Heroes, seeing how different ideas were cannibalized in pursuit of a single, and how other songs were left behind as Brian demonstrably lost interest in them.

I think another major fallacy here is some kind of species of the Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy; here, where one wrongly ascribes the change in sound to a deliberate delineation between one project and another, rather than attributing the change in sound to the change in sound per se that Brian was working towards all along.  It's that darned Baldwin organ; it's such a dramatically different sound that dominates the texture -- but if you take that away, it's, in my opinion, patently obvious that Brian was continually working incrementally towards reduced orchestration and simplified song structures.

I spend a lot of time transcribing the Beach Boys arrangements, and I think if I put up, say, the transcription of Wonderful Mark I, and the transcription of Wonderful as it came out on Smiley, you could see visually that the released version is more heavily orchestrated and more complexly structured than Mark I.

My point there is simply that swapping a harpsichord for a Baldwin does not automatically make something and less or more simple.

Incidentally, if anybody wants to see those Wonderful Transcriptions, I would share them.

All music, all art in general is subject to the power of the "fans" and those who will experience and form opinions and perceptions about what they're experiencing. If the creator of the art says "I wanted to portray a deer running through the woods in this piece" and fans say "the artist was portraying a train racing through a mountain pass", which one gets more weight? Once the artist hands off the work to the public, it's subject to their perceptions and opinions of the work as much as what the artist may have intended.

The dividing line, when perhaps it goes too far, is when fans insist that artist was portraying a train in the mountains as a factual statement after the artist said specifically they were portraying a deer in the woods when they created the work. That's where the fan doesn't have more power because they're perceiving rather than actually creating the work, but if their opinion becomes internalized (and expressed) as fact in direct contradiction with the artist's own words, the balance of power becomes arrogance of opinion more than experiencing the work as it was intended by the artist.

Suggesting people listen to a half hour of Smile and then the Smiley Smile album and offer their perceptions of the overall sound and texture of the two is not giving any one element more weight over the other. It's simply asking for opinions and perceptions when comparing two works from the same artist created within the same year.

Not to editorialize, I'd rather hear the opinions firsthand and as new opinions, but the majority of people who have heard Smile and Smiley Smile through the last decades when both were made available have said one sounds more stripped down, lo fi, and less complex than the other. Is that like the fictional artist's fans saying he portrayed a train versus a deer, or is it fans giving their honest appraisal of what they hear and perceive? If those fans hear the two examples, Smile versus Smiley Smile, as two separate entities rather than a continuation of the same project, they would be in agreement with the artists who created the music in 1966-67.

And I highly doubt the band would have played "Wonderful" or even "Wind Chimes" live in 1967 touring to support the Smiley album had they toured behind it any more than they didn't play "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times", "That's Not Me", or "You Still Believe In Me" when they were touring behind Pet Sounds, or "Let Him Run Wild" and "Amusement Parks USA" when they were touring behind the Summer Days LP. They mostly featured the singles and maybe one or two album cuts, as they would also do on the tours supporting Wild Honey, also notable that they added more musicians to the regular touring lineup even for those tours in 67-68.

The point about the sound of the records is being missed or ignored, I think. They got hammered in '67 for not sounding like the records, that's a fact, and the criticisms were published in various music papers in the UK and elsewhere. And unless it was pure coincidence rather than by design, the sound of their records changed noticeably and sounded less complex overall than they had in the past 2 years, they simplified their sound for the songs they would be playing live. That's not saying the recordings were not layered with sound, but the sound was different and less "studio" if that makes sense.

No. Once again, two things are being discussed here, and are being confused as one. The next album by the Beach Boys was not scrapped, because, well, the Beach Boys released an album. What was initially planned to be on that album, was scrapped. Songs and titles and bits and pieces were being "scrapped" every day. At one point, with all the press and the excitement that was generated for the album, it would have to be clarified that the next album would not look like what was initially promised.

The "next album" the Beach Boys released had not even been started when Taylor's article appeared announcing the album had been scrapped. So when Carl Wilson said specifically "we started from scratch" to make Smiley Smile, was he wrong? Starting from scratch is not the same as reshaping and reworking the existing project into something new. And the change to Smiley Smile was obviously not planned too far in advance if they had to rent studio gear, have a rented Gates Dualux radio station mixing console on Brian's kitchen table among other places, and cables running across the floors of his new house in order to record there. That's where the 2 weeks immediately following the band's return from Europe become so key to the timeline and history, as that looks more like the exact time when they shifted gears dramatically.

Are you suggesting there is no dividing line, no end point to separate what was being worked on as Smile from what was released as Smiley Smile? If so, then would that also suggest titling the box set "The Smile Sessions" was a mistake or a misnomer if there was no "Smile" project and it was just something that turned into the next album?

No. Yet again, we are talking about different things, and confusing them for the same thing. Work on material that was to end up on the next Beach Boys album started as soon as Pet Sounds was done, and never stopped. What the album was called and what recordings were going to be on it changed significantly, just about every week. At one point, it was going to be something called Smile. At another, it was called Smiley Smile, and it ended up completely different from how it started, save for Good Vibrations, Heroes, Vegetables, and many of the songs themselves. Almost everything on Smiley Smile was completely done over from scratch. In fact, most songs were started over from scratch more than once before the home studio ever existed. There are some recordings that obviously belong to one era and not the other (Cabin Essence being worked on purely during the Smile era, and Little Pad being a home studio creation), but there is no exact dividing line between the two projects. One became the other. If there is a date that we can say we know the album would not have been the same, it is May 6, via the press release. However, we know that the project had changed significantly long before then, and would continue to change significantly until the album was assembled.

These are facts, and they are not contradictory. And none of these facts suggest that Brian added melodica, celeste, Baldwin organ, a children's choir, and a spoken section to Wonderful in order to make the records more closely resemble the bass-drums-guitar touring lineup.

So the fact that the entire sound of the music changed dramatically, the way they recorded and more importantly where and with whom they recorded changed drastically, the production credit on the music changed, and it happened within a span of roughly 2 week at the end of May into June 1967 is of no consequence?

You cannot state as fact that there is or was no dividing line between the two projects when the band themselves and most fans who can easily listen to what was done for Smile versus what was "started from scratch" for Smiley Smile make that separation between the two, and in the band's case they're on the record since 1967 saying as much. If the band and the creators saw them as different projects, do you purport to know something the band didn't know and Smile just seamlessly flowed into Smiley Smile and there was no difference?

That's your opinion, and it's fine to have that opinion and stick to it, but when you have music for Smile which sounds that much different than what's on Smiley Smile, and when the creation of that music changed as dramatically as it did from April into May '67 going into June, it's obvious there was a drastic change that involved more than moving sections around and swapping songs in and out. They started a new project in June 1967 with new parameters and working methods, remaking certain songs and adding new ones. I don't know how more basic of an observation that can be.

I said this earlier in the discussion, and I'll say it again: Play 30 minutes of Smile music and then play the Smiley Smile album for some people, and see what the opinions are in terms of one blending into and becoming the other with no divide between them, or if they sound and feel like the same project. The overall sonic texture alone suggests exactly what Carl said in '67, and others have been saying since: They started from scratch on something new.

No. Once again, two things are being discussed here, and are being confused as one. The next album by the Beach Boys was not scrapped, because, well, the Beach Boys released an album. What was initially planned to be on that album, was scrapped. Songs and titles and bits and pieces were being "scrapped" every day. At one point, with all the press and the excitement that was generated for the album, it would have to be clarified that the next album would not look like what was initially promised.

The "next album" the Beach Boys released had not even been started when Taylor's article appeared announcing the album had been scrapped. So when Carl Wilson said specifically "we started from scratch" to make Smiley Smile, was he wrong? Starting from scratch is not the same as reshaping and reworking the existing project into something new. And the change to Smiley Smile was obviously not planned too far in advance if they had to rent studio gear, have a rented Gates Dualux radio station mixing console on Brian's kitchen table among other places, and cables running across the floors of his new house in order to record there. That's where the 2 weeks immediately following the band's return from Europe become so key to the timeline and history, as that looks more like the exact time when they shifted gears dramatically.

Are you suggesting there is no dividing line, no end point to separate what was being worked on as Smile from what was released as Smiley Smile? If so, then would that also suggest titling the box set "The Smile Sessions" was a mistake or a misnomer if there was no "Smile" project and it was just something that turned into the next album?

["The next album by the Beach Boys was never scrapped. It was continually changing. If you're asking if the exact moment Brian scrapped that list of 12 songs in favor of the 11 songs on Smiley Smile is known, well, that moment simply doesn't exist."]

Well, by "Smile", what exactly do you mean? What exact sequence of songs are you referring to, and what exact structure of each song?

The next album by the Beach Boys was never scrapped. It was continually changing. If you're asking if the exact moment Brian scrapped that list of 12 songs in favor of the 11 songs on Smiley Smile is known, well, that moment simply doesn't exist. We can know when lots of little changes were made, though. For example, Do You Like Worms was no longer a song by December 27, at the latest. The tape evidence suggests that the song had been chopped up on or before that date, with the chorus being removed to after the opening Heroes verse (where it would be "Heroes and Villains part 2" for the next month), and the verse was removed to the Prayer reel, where Da Da would immediately be recorded onto (it was possibly going to be used as an intro here). For another example, My Only Sunshine was no longer on the album by February 10, when Brian replaced the group vocals with his own voice, and used it as the fadeout to Heroes and Villains. Small little changes like these are traceable, as Smile turns from one thing into another. The album is a completely different entity in Brian's mind with each week, and to refuse to see it that way is to intentionally misunderstand Brian's working methods of the time.

Quote: "The next album by the Beach Boys was never scrapped. It was continually changing. If you're asking if the exact moment Brian scrapped that list of 12 songs in favor of the 11 songs on Smiley Smile is known, well, that moment simply doesn't exist."

Then the Derek Taylor "scrapped" article can be dismissed entirely? If there was never anything scrapped, what Taylor wrote and had published in May '67 meant absolutely nothing, and he was never told by anyone that Smile was "scrapped" as the basis of his article.

Sure, good point, but again, there are 2 things being talked about here, and we're confusing them for the same thing. Brian's original plan for the album had been scrapped. Brian was still working on an album for the Beach Boys, and there wasn't a new title for it yet. These 2 facts are not contradictory.

That seems more like opinion, unless there is proof besides Derek Taylor's article which is in question, as to when "Smile" was actually scrapped. The only thing that was reported definitively that Spring was that "Heroes" would not be coming out and "Vegetables" would possibly replace it as the single. Obviously that changed too. As late as that April 29 NME article, the Smile album was still the album of note everyone was waiting for. Nothing seems to have been decided until the band returned from Europe and they "started from scratch" as Carl described how Smiley Smile came to be.

Is there a firm date anywhere as to when "Smile" was scrapped? I've never seen one, and having looked at many angles and possibilities for years, I believe even more that Taylor's article wasn't as definitive (nor as factual) as had been previously thought.

Bruce and the entire band were interviewed in the same dressing room for that article, they were all there together! And unless Bruce met Ringo in the US (which obviously didn't happen), the interview took place just as I already laid out the timeline.

Does it make sense if an article appeared in the UK press stating the most anticipated album in the pop world at that time had been "scrapped", that the band would have found out at least about the article? They were surrounded by the UK music press, if such a bombshell were dropped in Disc & Music Echo, they'd ask the band about it!

I find it totally illogical to assume the band would not have found out or were informed by someone/anyone around them that Derek Taylor just announced their new album was reported as "scrapped".

Here's the full scan of the article where the Bruce quote appeared with all the context:

I think the band was always trying to put the best face possible on the ongoing situation whenever they are questioned about the "new album" during the spring of '67. By this point, they are seasoned veterans in terms of dealing with/deflecting the press. It's almost certainly that simple. And even if they are in a tussle with Brian over SMiLE, they are not going to voice any of that to the press--that would be like pouring gasoline on an already-existing fire...

Also, we have to be careful about applying the right dates to some of the quotes being referenced. That Bruce quote seems to be in reference to EMI's release of "Then I Kissed Her" as a stopgap single in the UK at the end of April, just as the band is arriving for their tour. Badman dates the quote as occurring on April 29th or 30th, which is a week ahead of Taylor's 5/6 squib.

That was the beginning of some very negative press in the UK, as GF has already noted.

I'm sticking with the theory that Brian used Derek T. as a go-between to signal his willingness to revisit issues that had contributed to an impasse. And that impasse had clearly left Brian dispirited, as his lack of progress in returning to the SMiLE tracks from late '66 during the band's absence in April-May demonstrates. He must have been feeling something rather opposite from those lines in the early version of H&V: "at threescore and five I'm very much alive/I still got the jive to survive with the...". Whatever he was doing with "DaDa," it clearly was superseded by the events that took place immediately thereafter, when the band returned, licking their wounds from the European tour and ready to engage in an altered plan of action.

And just as clearly (as GF has noted here a couple of times) Brian was working on the assumption that he could have some kind of "dual track" where he was overseeing a transition of the band into handling more of its own songwriting/production AND he was going to do his own outside productions (Redwood, clearly, and quite possibly some revamped version of the '66 SMiLE tracks).

I think the overarching mystery is what happened to the plans to have a Brother Records 9002/9003 etc. follow SMILEY SMILE, and why WILD HONEY wound up back on Capitol after all the time and trouble to establish Brother Records.

Don, the Bruce quote dates from the time I outlined above. They were still in the US April 29 and the interview was conducted in their dressing room *after* the NME event happened (May 7). If Badman wrote otherwise, he was wrong:

And I'll add one more piece of info that may put even more perspective on the Bruce quote: Bruce said that during a group interview in their dressing room, speaking to Keith Altham, just before they were to leave for Europe for the rest of the tour. It's easy to peg the date of this group interview: The NME show they reference in the interview was May 7th, they played Manchester May 8, two more gigs in Scotland the 9th and 10th, then they were in Sweden on the 12th. It wasn't a solo Bruce conversation, or a phone-in interview: The entire band was being interviewed in their dressing room.

Maybe the Derek Taylor piece was a deliberate move to try to deflect public focus off them for a while? But then that still doesn't explain the comment from bruce.

That's one of the mysteries indeed, Jay. It doesn't add up.

And I'll add one more piece of info that may put even more perspective on the Bruce quote: Bruce said that during a group interview in their dressing room, speaking to Keith Altham, just before they were to leave for Europe for the rest of the tour. It's easy to peg the date of this group interview: The NME show they reference in the interview was May 7th, they played Manchester May 8, two more gigs in Scotland the 9th and 10th, then they were in Sweden on the 12th. It wasn't a solo Bruce conversation, or a phone-in interview: The entire band was being interviewed in their dressing room.

I have scans of these columns as they appeared in the publications which I can post too just so the context is all there instead of random quotes.

[In May 1967, we know it would not have been called Smile. But LTSDD was a new Beach Boys recording, possibly something that Brian was doing specifically for Vegetables' B-side, and it would likely have appeared on the album too.]

LTSDD was always a Beach Boys song that would've been on the next Beach Boys album after Pet Sounds at the time it was being worked on.

In late December 1966, who knows if this album would've been called Smile if Brian was forced to put it out then, but it would not have included Do You Like Worms, The Elements, or I'm in Great Shape, as those songs had been chopped up, used in other songs, or scrapped.

In May 1967, we know it would not have been called Smile. But LTSDD was a new Beach Boys recording, possibly something that Brian was doing specifically for Vegetables' B-side, and it would likely have appeared on the album too.

In early June, with the song now called Cool, Cool Water, it would have appeared on the new album. Brian was still working on a single, and that had been the focus for about half a year, but the single would probably be on the new album as well.

When the home studio was set up, there may have been an early attempt at Cool Cool Water, though that much isn't super clear as of yet. But whatever the case, the song was soon abandoned in favor of other material, and it did not end up on Smiley Smile. Brian continued to work on it over the coming years until it found its way onto Sunflower.

Once again I'll ask, how do "we" know it would not have been called Smile?

This is Bruce telling this to writer Keith Altham in the May 27 edition of New Musical Express:

"I've got some tapes at home of the new tracks to be on the "Smile" LP which would blow your mind. All the ideas are new and Brian is coming up with fantastic ideas all the time"

The interview would have happened in the second week of May, 1967. This would have been after the Taylor "scrapped" article appeared in Disc & Music Echo, May 6 edition. It was still called Smile.

And this is the same writer Keith Altham who reported in the April 29 edition of NME on "their next LP Smile", saying "All the 12 tracks for the new album are completed" and "there are plans to release the album on a rush schedule at any moment." The same article then describes Paul McCartney's visit to LA "a few weeks ago" with specific detail on the jam session at Papa John and Michelle Phillips' house, including what instruments were played.

So according to one of the Beach Boys, interviewed on tour after the Taylor article, the album was still called "Smile". According to NME writer Keith Altham, whoever gave him the information on it being complete and ready for a rush release had to be pretty close to a main source to report on what was played at a jam session attended by only a few of rock's elite...

And then Taylor's piece in D&ME literally a week later says it's scrapped. Unbeknownst to the band obviously.

That is what never added up. It still doesn't. And press reports going into June and even July are still citing an LP named "Smile".

So, the whole "Love to Say Da Da is water" thing has been going around for a while, and somehow, despite lots of contrary information being available, it still goes around, so I thought I'd clarify a few things.

This was first assumed way back when, and it would be a reasonable assumption to make if Brian's music-making fit into a cohesive plan over long stretches of time, and if he wasn't going through rewrites and resketches of his ideas every single day. Love to Say Da Da is musically the same as Cool, Cool Water right? And wasn't Brian working on an "Elements" track? So that must've been the water section! It really makes perfect sense on paper. But, things aren't that simple.

The first mention of "The Elements" is in Frank Holmes' artwork, which was done from lyric sheets supplied by Brian and Van at the start of the project. At this point in time, "The Elements" was the title of a song that contained the lyric "my vega-tables." Essentially, it was the title for the song most people refer to as Vega-Tables or Vegetables. However, when the list of songs was written out for Capitol's mockup covers, "Vega-Tables" and "The Elements" were listed as two separate songs. So, "Vega-Tables" had been renamed, and "The Elements" title was now being used for another song. It was probably at this time that Brian had his plans to record a 4 part suite, with each part representing fire, earth, air, and water, as a few friends from the era have recalled.

This idea was first put on tape on November 28 at Gold Star, with the infamous Fire section (slated by Larry Levine as "part 1" of this song called "The Elements"). But even by the time Brian was leaving the session, he'd changed his plans: "Yeah, I'm going to call this 'Mrs. O'Leary's Fire' and I think it might just scare a whole lot of people" (Goodbye Surfing, Hello God). So by the end of that very day, a song titled "The Elements" no longer existed, and thus would not have appeared on Smile. "The Elements" is not a title that shows up on any tapes, Capitol contracts, or AFM sheets again. The 4 part idea was thrown away in favor of a fire-centric song called Mrs. O'Leary's Fire, which comes straight from Brian himself.

A few days later, of course, the building burned down, and even that song got thrown away. "I can do a candle and it's still a fire."

A month after all this, on either December 27 or 28, Brian records Love to Say Da Da for the first time, in 2 sections (The Smile Sessions, disc 4, tracks 8 & 9). It's titled "Da Da" on the tape box, but that is probably just shortened from the full title (the verse of DYLW was spliced onto this reel too, possibly as an intro for this new song, and is just called "Worms"). 5 months after this, from May 16-18, he re-records it, beefing it up from a few keyboards to a full wrecking crew production at Gold Star (The Smile Sessions, disc 4, tracks 10-13). Again, it goes unfinished. 2 and a half weeks later, he re-records it again at Western, now as Cool Cool Water. Also left unfinished. It gets re-recorded in several forms over the next few years, and finally ends up on Sunflower.

So, songs called The Elements and Love to Say Da Da never coexisted. One was written a month after the other was gone. A big misconception about Smile is that Brian was working on the same album continuously over the many months we call the Smile era. But Brian's changing of plans was occurring at a frantic pace. Of course, he had a vision and a plan for everything he recorded - but this plan looked different every day.

It may be more a case of "DaDa" in all it's incarnations not being a part of Smile, moreso than whether it was an element or not. Some suggestions were made earlier that Dada was not a part of Smile and was something new Brian was doing in May '67 at those last sessions before the band returned from the tour, and the lineage of that music (and the musical ideas) had been a part of Smile for months by the time Brian held those May sessions.

Separate issue and just curious on the opinions, but does the track's placement on the BWPS Smile with Van Dyke's lyrics hold any weight in assumptions about the track's original possibilities in the original Smile plans?

I’m trying to get caught up so this may have been addressed already..

The whole thing with Derek Taylor’s words, and what the band said later… honestly? If I’m being completely and honestly objective, the whole thing sounds like spin. “It’s not destroyed , it’s scrapped! Cause Brian scraps what he destroys and throws away”. That’s what Taylor was saying if you take out the pretentious flowery talk. What the f*** does that even mean?  Why put out a purposely vague statement like that, full of doublespeak?  

The band not knowing the album was canceled…ehh… one would think it would become patently obvious once some of the songs were re-recorded and released, or were cannibalized to make new songs (Dada -> Cool Cool Water, Wind Chimes-> Can’t Wait Too Long). Just cause it worked once with R(H)onda doesn’t mean it would work again. Logically speaking, there is no way Smile could’ve ever come out once Smiley Smile was released , and certainly not after Wild Honey, regardless of memos. I personally believe all the post -Smiley talk about Smile was using the hype in a desperate attempt to stay relevant.

As for the original question posed in the thread, I have one of my own…

How much of what we’ve heard of Smile was vintage 1966 and 1967 work, and not compiled together after the fact?  I mean, Cabinessence didn’t have a lead recorded til 68. The bootlegs..:weren’t they based on edits made in vain attempts to release it over the years?

As I surmised, Billy, Taylor's words in that article could very well be go-between signaling from Brian, which would explain why it is so convoluted (if we set aside the bottle of scotch while at the typewriter theory). Given what we know about Brian, he might well have wanted to have that information get to the band in a more indirect manner, which would set the stage for a discussion of how to get past the roadblocks stumbling them...

One thing that hasn't been mentioned in this thread is the month away from the studio before the DaDa sessions. That reminds me of a passage in David Leaf's 1985 "codetta" material, when he suggests that the home studio was something the band argued for because Brian wasn't going to the studios anymore. The relevant passage stems from David's initial conversations with Steve Desper, whom he'd been unable to contact in 1977-78 when writing "the Myth":

In my original writing, I ignored the total disruption the studio caused in the Wilson household, and envisioned Brian's home studio as this terrific environment where Brian could be creative. My first mistake was in assuming that Brian even wanted a studio in his home. As Desper explains, in mid-1967, to the Beach Boys, the first obvious sign of there being something "wrong" with Brian was that he had stopped going to the studio. So, as Desper recalls, the Beach Boys brought the studio to Brian, hoping that the proximity of the equipment would stimulate him.

Now this could be somewhat more involved than how it's portrayed here. Since whatever new direction to be taken if the material from SMiLE was going to be "sealed in a can" would need to get underway quickly, and given that the band (as GF has noted) was looking for material they could both participate more directly in producing and be able to play live more easily, the best solution for all those requirements was to build their own studio. Putting it in Brian's house saved the cost of buying/renting a separate building, and it would (hopefully) focus everyone's creativity. And Brian cranked out a lot of material there during that first year--the SMILEY tracks, the WILD HONEY tracks and the FRIENDS sessions (though it's clear they were still doing some work at various studios throughout that period).

Circling back to the point where a decision to put a studio in Bellagio occurs, and looking at the month of production inactivity, it's clear that something had to give right at that moment. A new album from scratch with the band as the musicians, a studio where they could all become more proficient in production--there had to be some type of tradeoff in all that coming back to Brian...and the two things that come to mind are: 1) he gets to continue producing outside acts and (maybe) 2) he gets decision-making control over what happens to the stuff "sealed in a can."

And it looks as though both of those got taken away from him over time. The Redwood incident left him without an outside act to produce, and ultimately forced him to sneak unorthodox material onto the FRIENDS LP ("Busy Doin' Nothing," "Diamond Head," "Transcendental Meditation")--with the result being that the LP had only one single (that missed the Top 40), and the LP was their worst seller by far. That must have set off more alarm bells. Depression and reclusiveness followed in the fall of '68, and the response was to take away any chance that he could work on SMiLE by grabbing two tracks that were closest to being finished and putting them on 20/20--tossed on at the end of Side 2, just to fill out the LP. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment...

(As for the provenance of the SMiLE material, I think Alan Boyd is the man who has the most fingers on that pulse, since he compiled the SMiLE sessions box. There were clearly some compilations made in the late 60s, and early 70s--and I think the research experts can address that, including answering what part of those compilations were included in the materials provided to Byron Priess when he wrote his authorized bio in '79.)

Don, you mention an excellent point worth noting. Did Brian even want a studio in his home, did his wife want a studio in his home, and after their first daughter was born, how did that change the dynamic even further?

It's a point that I've rarely seen mentioned or discussed, but one absolutely worth looking at beyond Smile. If the band and the recording process was something that had been causing issues and even stress for Brian, at least he had an "out" where he could go home and get away from the studios. The old concept of not bringing your work problems home with you. But now, like it or not, the work was in his new home (they had literally just moved in that Spring of '67) all the time.

Interesting aspect of all this to consider.

Re the discussion about the band not being able to produce the sound for Pet Sounds on stage (and therefore other more complex music such as Smile) - Thanks to WilJC we now know Derek Taylor's press release included the information that The Beach Boys had just arrived in the UK with  'Igor Horoshevsky, Frank St Peters, Jim Carther and Richard Thompson ...
    Who, then, are Igor and Co.? A fair question. Igor is up there in huge letters on the side of the Beach Boys’ aircraft. “The Beach Boys and Igor,” says the sign, without explanation or apology.
    The answer is the fine big band the group promised last time they came to Britain.
    Frank plays saxophone, flute and clarinet; Jim plays flute and sax; Richard dabbles in flugelhorn, harpsichord, flute, organ, saxophone and clarinet.
    And who’s this Horoshevsky cat? He plays cello. And he will steer the band on a path of rich, red music across the nation and set these isles once again vibrating good and strong to the Beach Boys.)."  

I also read yesterday that Brian was considering using an orchestra to play with the band.  So whatever the pared down style of Smiley, Wild Honey and Friends was about, it wasn't about reproducing the sound on stage and by extension not releasing Smile was nothing to do with it either.

Consider that even with the extra cost of hiring and traveling with those musicians, and the union rules prevented them from playing in some cases, the band still got hammered in the press for not sounding like their records on that tour. It didn't work.

Using the Jasper Dailey track to try to make a point about Brian's work in February '67 just doesn't work. For those who don't know enough about the track or why Brian even recorded Jasper singing as he did, there is plenty already on the record to explain it. But briefly, here's some background and a story to illustrate Brian's humor.

Since Brian and Michael Vosse flew to Michigan in October 1966 to be with the band when they unveiled Good Vibrations live on stage, Brian became an even bigger fan of natural, often unintentional humor, and began wanting to capture it on tape. On the cab ride outside the airport in Michigan, Brian and Vosse had a cab driver whose way of talking and explaining things cracked Brian up. He thought the cabbie was hilarious, and began to roll tape on his portable reel to reel as the guy drove them around the airport. The tape exists in full in the vault. The guy does have a unique way of explaining traffic patterns, and uses the word "Des Plains" in a way I guess Brian found humorous.

At the same time, Brian also started rolling tape on that portable machine at all kinds of places and events, and had Vosse doing similar excursions to record what I guess we'd call now "found audio" or audio verite recordings. Again some survive in the vault, others are lost to time.

Jasper Dailey was a freelance photographer who hung around the LA studios snapping candid shots of the musicians at work, and he got to know a lot of them, including Brian. Most if not all of the candid Smile studio photos were taken by either Jasper, the freelancer, or Guy Webster, who I believe was an "official" photographer for Capitol Records. Jasper had a unique voice, as wse all can hear, and Brian thought it would be good to capture him on tape singing, and actually worked up songs (and arrangements) for him to sing. Again, part of that found humor or unintentional humor vibe he was into at this time.

So that's why the Jasper sessions happened, and why they sound that way. It was part of Brian's humor trip, nothing more or less than that. He was always, it seems during the Smile era, planning a humor album separate from the Smile project itself, which would also feature humor. Brian was also a fan of the put-on (those unfamiliar with the term, look it up) and had been doing put-on comedy since he was a kid. The back cover photo of Smile was a put-on, as was that odd photo of the Boys in a boat in Boston Harbor looking very cold. A total put-on. That's key to understanding more of what he did and why he did it, and not just with Smile.

So here's the story involving the Jasper tapes, I know it's been printed somewhere and I can't recall exactly where I heard it, but I'll paraphrase:

A&M Records was a new label at the time, and was trying to land some high profile clients. They, as other labels were too, were curious to hear what Brian was doing in the studio as there was a lot of mystery and anticipation over this new mind-blowing music he was making in the studios around LA. Somehow a meeting was arranged where A&M was going to try to woo Brian into signing and also hear what he was working on. If A&M, a new player in the game, could land Brian Wilson at this time, it would have been a major coup.

So Brian and Vosse head to the offices of A&M with Brian carrying a tape. The meeting begins in one of the head executive's offices (or it could have been the label head himself, I don't recall). I guess talk came around to what Brian was doing, and what he had to offer. Brian has the tape ready, I guess the exec is excited to hear whatever mind-blowing music he was making with an eye toward releasing it on his label, and they hit play on the tape machine.

It's the tape of Jasper Dailey singing.

The whole thing was a put on.

And that's Brian's humor in a nutshell.  

[we got into a thing where we just wanted to ease up and make a simple album. It was a nice change.]

Derek... worked for their Beach Boys as their publicist? Are you seriously contending that there's any possibility it didn't run through Brian, or that someone else passed the word to Derek who didn't communicate with Brian at all before writing and publishing it?

If Derek was their publicist, and had all this information about the tour, the musicians, even the airplane, then why were the Beach Boys seemingly unaware the album had been "scrapped" when interviewed shortly *after* this piece was published? Read the comment from Bruce especially, but also Mike and Dennis too, they're talking as if the album is still being worked on and will come out. That's odd considering their publicist probably would have told them at some point, right?

"If Derek was their publicist"? He... was? He was that? Yes?

It's not exactly a gigantic semantic leap from "scrapped" to "Brian doesn't want to use most of the things he's recorded over the last several months and complete the list of songs the record label are expecting".

Word is they were also working with another publicist for that leg of the tour, I'll get his name when I can. But seriously though, no one told the band that the album had been scrapped after Taylor's article appeared? They talk as if they had no idea, and that Smile would be coming out. Not that it was scrapped, shelved, put in the can, or whatever semantic would fit. 

There are two different Smile albums at play here.  There is the originally planned 12 track Smile with the associated tracks and songs Brian worked on from August 66- March 67.  This is what Derek Taylor is saying has been sealed in a can and "scrapped."  Someone - presumably Brian - informed him that he was abandoning these tracks (but not necessarily the songs, as we see with Smiley).  As has been pointed out, Dada was Brian starting something new, whether for a B side of a single or a track for an album.

Then there is Smile as the name of "the next Beach Boys album" - whatever Brian decided it would consist of.  That's what the Beach Boys are talking about.  An album was continuing to be worked on.  An album would eventually come out.  And to be fair to them, Brian probably wasn't communicating to Mike, Al, Carl et al what he was going to exclude or include on "the next album" from what he had been recording - as it turns out very little was included, only about half of Heroes and the end of Vegetables.

Two quick points: First, DaDa wasn't new at all, it was Brian's "All Day" from  January '67 with more instruments.

Second, consider what Carl said in the LA Times interview:

Excerpts from "The Beach Boys' Quickest Album" , LA Times, October 8th 1967:

"Well, the album didn't really head for any direction. We just decided to, or I should say Brian decided to, make a real simple album. So, with that in mind, we recorded it at his house and it's the quickest album we've ever done." (Carl Wilson quote)

"You see, the whole thing is that 'Pet Sounds' was really an expanded type of musical thing. It's really quite a musical album and we got into a thing where we just wanted to ease up and make a simple album. It was a nice change. It's very hard on a person to keep on doing a 'Pet Sounds.'" (Carl Wilson quote)

Last year, when "Good Vibrations" was racking up its million-plus sales, Capitol had the follow-up album scheduled under the title of "Smile." The album jacket already had been printed, a picture of a shop which dispensed smiles. But the album never came out and the Beach Boys became embroiled in a royalty suit against Capitol. Rumors said that Brian, a perfectionist, had destroyed all the tapes for the LP. "We didn't scrap them," Carl said. "We just haven't used them yet. We did it all from scratch when we started again. We actually had finished the album but then a lot of things didn't turn out the way Brian liked. We all didn't agree on different types of things. We decided to do something new."

"If he gets an idea it's now and it's better than something from the past. I've seen it a hundred times. We've seen a lot of potentially great songs just be shelved. They come out maybe two or three years later, but they're in his mind somehow. If that particular idea seems to fit what he's working on at the time it will just come naturally." (Mike Love quote)

"We didn't scrap them". Isn't it interesting that Carl used the word "scrap", as if he were responding to the Taylor comment 4 months later?

Arthur Howes was the promoter for that May '67 leg of the tour, a man named Roger Easterby was working at Howes' office as the publicist for the tour. Derek Taylor eventually stopped working for the band as their official hired publicist, I can't recall when that happened though.

Derek... worked for their Beach Boys as their publicist? Are you seriously contending that there's any possibility it didn't run through Brian, or that someone else passed the word to Derek who didn't communicate with Brian at all before writing and publishing it?

If Derek was their publicist, and had all this information about the tour, the musicians, even the airplane, then why were the Beach Boys seemingly unaware the album had been "scrapped" when interviewed shortly *after* this piece was published? Read the comment from Bruce especially, but also Mike and Dennis too, they're talking as if the album is still being worked on and will come out. That's odd considering their publicist probably would have told them at some point, right?

"If Derek was their publicist"? He... was? He was that? Yes?

It's not exactly a gigantic semantic leap from "scrapped" to "Brian doesn't want to use most of the things he's recorded over the last several months and complete the list of songs the record label are expecting".

Word is they were also working with another publicist for that leg of the tour, I'll get his name when I can. But seriously though, no one told the band that the album had been scrapped after Taylor's article appeared? They talk as if they had no idea, and that Smile would be coming out. Not that it was scrapped, shelved, put in the can, or whatever semantic would fit. 

Derek... worked for their Beach Boys as their publicist? Are you seriously contending that there's any possibility it didn't run through Brian, or that someone else passed the word to Derek who didn't communicate with Brian at all before writing and publishing it?

If Derek was their publicist, and had all this information about the tour, the musicians, even the airplane, then why were the Beach Boys seemingly unaware the album had been "scrapped" when interviewed shortly *after* this piece was published? Read the comment from Bruce especially, but also Mike and Dennis too, they're talking as if the album is still being worked on and will come out. That's odd considering their publicist probably would have told them at some point, right?

You seem very certain the Taylor piece was published "at Brian's behest". How do you know this with any degree of certainty or proof? It was never proven where or how Taylor got the word (or if he even did) to publish that statement.

--Speculation here--Brian has a despairing conversation with Derek Taylor, where he suggests that SMILE is going to put away. Taylor overreacts, sends out his press release about SMiLE being "scrapped."

--LEAVING TWO MYSTERIES: 1) if Smiley was mixed by mid-July, why wait two months to release it?

2) Why did the 10-track SMiLE LP disappear along with the Brother Records logo?

I can’t honestly imagine Derek Taylor, a publicist, rushing off to send out a press release without some serious approval and authority when there is no up side to the message and which would likely cause some damage to the group.  That’s exactly the opposite of what a publicist does.

I’m not sure that 2 months is a great deal of time considering it has to be pressed, advertised, jackets prepared and printed, orders received and processed - though it is not the kind of business I’ve been involved in so I could be wrong.

My point in the first place was that Smile may have been finished and that it was deliberately pulled by Capitol, Brian or the band.

From the data at Bellagio, we see that PET SOUNDS was released a bit less than a month after it was mastered.

And there is about a month between the last recording session for WILD HONEY (mid-November 1967) and its release date (December 18).

By the time SMILEY SMILE came out it was sixteen months since PET SOUNDS, and there was a lot of consternation about the non-appearance of the follow-up LP. With the mastering finished in late July and H&V released at just about the same moment, it's odd that it took another month UNLESS something else came up to delay it.

An analogous example is the FRIENDS LP, which also languished for a couple months after the mastering was complete. With the single doing poorly, and with a sizable amount of turmoil over touring dates, there may have been some second-guessing about the LP, which clearly had no other potential hits on it...which explains the flurry of additional recording activity at the time, including "Do It Again," which came out as a 45 just two weeks after the FRIENDD LP was finally release.

Delays of this type likely involve some other issues behind the scenes, most likely within the band. And the band had to be concerned about their career viability in May-June 1968...

Don, I think this may explain the delay in some part:



That was published in Billboard, July 22 1967. This was when the "deal" between Capitol and the band, establishing Brother Records and the distribution agreement was finalized. With the deal involving terms of the previous lawsuit settlement, I can imagine there were mountains of legal documents to sign and approve before anything could be put in motion. As noted in the article, KHJ (and other radio stations) had already been playing exclusive tape dubs of the Heroes single, but it had not seen an official release on 45rpm until 2 days after this article, so the machine moved pretty quickly. Note the dates on the Capitol/Engemann Smile memos too, concerning the booklets and album art - July 25th. It took the sealing of the deal to get all of these parts moving.

I can imagine there were more legal issues at work as well which delayed the album release, and also worth noting is that the "Gettin Hungry" single was released at almost the same time (within weeks at least) as the Smiley album that September.

Also worth noting is how Capitol released "Best Of volume 2" at the end of July, so maybe they staggered the releases so the shelves wouldn't be filled with two Beach Boys albums, one showing their old sound and the latest showcasing a radically different sound. Give the Greatest Hits vol 2 a chance to sell, run its course throughout the remaining summer months, then drop the new album? Just a thought.

It's pretty clear to see what was worked on and to assume why those tracks were worked on, not just from the session dates but also by various articles and interviews where it can be pieced together. They needed a single to follow up GV, obviously, so there are Heroes and Vegetables getting the majority of the sessions after January. Those were the two titles specifically mentioned as single material, but they would also be included on the album and were on the tracklist (and back cover slick). So they had to be worked on with perhaps more of a priority than some of the others if they were tagged as potential singles. But that's not enough to suggest because they were single material and getting more of the attention after January and into May that they were not "Smile" album tracks too, or that work was not being done on the album "for months". It was all part of the same thing. The only examples that were not part of the bigger picture after January were the Jasper Daily sessions and Carl's "Tones" sessions.

What's also crucial to consider in terms of asking why wasn't more work done on those existing album tracks during this time opens up the issues of Carl being arrested for evading the draft, the lawsuit against Capitol being filed in March '67, and of course the fact that the band who still had to add vocals to the tracks recorded in '66 would be unavailable due to that 5-6 week tour in April and May. You can assume all that work was done on Vegetables in April to get what was needed before they left, and so another potential single would be "in the can" for a possible single, along with Heroes.

I don't think any of that suggests work on the album overall was halted in any way if there were Smile-related sessions held every month from January to May '67 and some issues that were purely external such as the lawsuit, the draft arrest, and others like the tour simply made work impossible since key members would be unavailable.

[Smile was announced as "scrapped" (which meant temporarily put aside in favor of something else) on May 6, but it had not been worked on for many months before that.]

When the Boys returned to the US that May, Brian was still recording Smile. The Derek Taylor announcement, I think, was either premature or simply wrong when it was published. So the Boys return, upset at the criticism and here's Brian still recording tracks which could not be reproduced on the stage. There are possibly arguments, finger pointing, anger, etc.

I'm extremely confused... you think that the Beach Boys accidentally announced that their new album was scrapped, and then happened to scrap the new album later? All because Love to Say Da Da has clarinets instead of melodicas and children's choirs? The latter being somehow easier to reproduce on stage?

I'd like to know who told Derek Taylor to make that announcement.  Capitol didn't - they still had recording sessions scheduled after that date.  Brian could have but in July was still discussing the cover for Smile so it seems unlikely.  Who would that serve?  Who would Derek Taylor believe and accept their authority to act upon it?  Was the announcement made to cause the scrapping of the album?  Seems to have worked that way.

Brian Wilson. Derek was a publicist working for the Beach Boys, and Brian was the guy who was making all the decisions, especially about Smile. Any theory that Taylor went rogue and accidentally predicted the future, or just straight up lied (and became right), comes directly from crazy town. Smile was announced as "scrapped" (which meant temporarily put aside in favor of something else) on May 6, but it had not been worked on for many months before that. The Beach Boys still had recording sessions after that date because they never stopped working on an album. These recording sessions continued all the way until July 20.

Asking about the point in bold: Where did you get that information that it had not been worked on for many months? Work was done on various Smile tracks every month in 1967 from January up to June. It stopped in mid-April because the Beach Boys would leave for a 5-6 week tour of the US and then Europe and were not available to record in LA. Brian held the DaDa sessions in May while the band was still in Europe, after Taylor's comments had been published.

So I'll ask in reference to Carl's October 1967 interview, was Carl also a resident of "crazy town" with the way he directly contradicted Taylor's statement?

Carl specifically said it wasn't scrapped, and specifically said they started again from scratch (on Smiley Smile). If Carl is to be believed, that all but destroys the narrative that Smile and Smiley Smile were part of the same project timeline, that Smiley Smile *is* Smile, and that sessions merely blended into each other. Carl suggested a definite breaking point in the timeline switching from work on Smile to work on what became "Smiley Smile", with the phrase "starting from scratch" being pretty definite.

That breaking point, as pointed out earlier, was the two weeks at the end of May, into the first week of June '67 when the Boys returned from the European tour, held sessions at Western and Sound Recorders for "Vegetables", "With Me Tonight", and "Cool Cool Water", then in the span of one week drastically changed the entire working method and moved to Brian's house to start recording what ended up on Smiley Smile.