RIP Davy. The Monkees are among my favorites, I love the music, the TV shows, and the movie(s). I met him in 1991 and he signed my copy of "More Of The Monkees". Daydream Believer will stand as one of the best records of the 60's.

Guitarfool, those ads remind me of Goldmine, Discoveries, and Record Collector magazines that I use to pick up and read from front to back. Those prices look very familiar!! This was before the Internet and free downloads. You relied on either a fanzine or fellow collector to give you a heads up on the tracks and quality, attend a record swap meet, or call the shop/seller/trader who was selling the boot to give you information on it, or for CD's, last resort was to settle on a CDR! For my Beatles stuff, I subscribed to Belmo's Beatleg News and Sulpy's 910. By the way, Sulpy has a new issue out on the new SMiLE Sessions - interview with Carol Kaye is in there for AGD to scrutinize.... 

Me too! I used to get the issues and first check the ads for anything that said "Beach Boys", "Monkees", or "Chicago", and I'd usually find little to nothing of interest! The first Goldmine I ever got was a free giveaway sample copy at a record show in Valley Forge, PA. After that I was hooked. And I began sending Self Addressed Stamped Envelopes all over the US to get the "good stuff" on the lists.

Those magazines may still be the only places where Merrell Fankhauser albums are more popular than The Beatles or Beach Boys...

Good times, pre-internet.

To JohnMill, I just wanted to add a few things to consider: You're talking about what amounted to a period of four days in Feb. 1969, from the 22nd to the 25th. The delay from the last proper session on Jan. 31 was from Glyn Johns as you mentioned, as well as Billy Preston who I guess they still considered an active participant. But the key "missing person" would be George Harrison who was out of action during these weeks in February because he had surgery to remove his tonsils.

So yes, when they got back together on the 22nd, they recorded I Want You on Feb. 22nd and that was it, nothing else was recorded. Those other days were for mixing and editing, then George came into the studio by himself on Feb 25th to record demos of three originals which had been rehearsed during the Get Back sessions.

But - One of the key dates would be in early March when Paul and John called Glyn Johns and asked him to compile, edit, and start mixing an album from all of the tapes they had recorded in January. At this point, it feels like John and Paul at least had put an official "stop" to the work on that proposed album and had given Glyn Johns the power to put it together. Notice they didn't record anything else until mid-April, when Geoff Emerick was again asked to engineer what became "Ballad Of J&Y' and two days later, they started work on two of the songs Harrison had demo'ed back on Feb. 25th.

This work was done a month after Johns had worked on editing and mixing the "Get Back" tapes. Glyn Johns himself would not engineer another recording until early May. Johns later prepared the master for the "Get Back" album with George Harrison and George Martin present on May 28th.

It feels like John and Paul had ended the Get Back project when they hired Glyn Johns to mix in early March. All that was left was the final touches, as soon as Johns had something solid to hand in. I don't think anything that wasn't on Glyn Johns' preliminary or working tracklists would have been considered a part of Get Back. "I Want You" was merely on the shelf, as were "Something" and "Old Brown Shoe".

Who's right?  I think they're talking above about the 2-CD Vigotone release as being the best. That's different than the Japanese SMiLE that came out around 1990. Think I paid 30 or 40 bucks for that at the time.

The Japanese T2580-2 CD (20 tracks) that I have has no indication of who released it. Yeah, that's an excellent quality disc that was supposedly compiled by Linett when a legit release of SMiLE was considered in 1988. This contained the original versions of Wind Chimes and Vega-Tables, Brian’s solo demo of Surf’s Up, and 7 minutes of unreleasased Heroes and Villains segments.

I think he was referring to the CD advertisement from 1991 which I scanned, where it says "This is the one!!" next to the Japanese Smile listing.

I have to clarify something I wrote about Abbey Road - Again with anything Beatles, it can be frustrating to deal with several different accounts of the same story. I realized there are as many accounts of people working on Abbey Road who say there was no indication it was to be the "last" Beatle album, rather it was just the next project in line to be recorded. What I suggested was based on what I heard, that there was a deliberate effort to do a better job knowing it was all coming to an end. Then there are observers who say certain members were not all that enthusiastic about the studio work unless it was on their own composition.

I guess we have to weigh it all and form our own opinions of what happened. It reminds me of those Anthology scenes where the three Beatles are reciting different versions of the same story.

Pages 30 & 31...

I don't have the issue, details please?

Here is a blast from the past, from the days before CD burning and file sharing, when crappy cassettes and low-level high-speed dubs were sold or traded as the substitute for paying "retail" for this stuff if you wanted it. The "good old days"! I think the statute of limitations has run out, but I didn't include the names...and note the prices. First one from 1991, second from 1994.

The quality of the Smile vinyl boots is a non-factor by now. There is little or nothing that can't be found in better quality somewhere else. I'm glad, in a way, that the novelty of the vinyl boots has become just that - a novelty. Because for the most part, the sound quality wasn't worth the cost of admission. At least compared to what came later.

Don't forget, that cost of admission could be quite high...examples to follow.

I actually never stated that.

Uh yeah, sorry, that was The Return of the Son of Mike's Beard.. 

Yes it was me and I admit I'd overlooked Across The Universe when making that post. However I still stand by my statement that everything else John and George put forward for the album blows.

You should reconsider that statement, at least where George is concerned. This is a partial list of songs George put forward and recorded/rehearsed with the band during the Let It Be sessions:

Something
All Things Must Pass
Isn't It A Pity
Old Brown Shoe
I Me Mine
For You Blue
Hear Me Lord
Let It Down

That's a partial list, not including covers of things he heard when hanging out with Dylan and The Band, songs he'd do with Jackie Lomax, and other works-in-progress.

Note that on this partial list, you have one smash hit Beatles single A-side, one Beatles B-side, one solo hit single, 2 Beatles album cuts, one title track of a solo triple album, and two solo album cuts.

Not a bad haul for a group of songs that "blows".

I go back to several accounts of those around the band saying they approached Abbey Road as the "grand finale" of sorts, the one they wanted to bid farewell with and make it a grand exit. You can hear this in the *performances*, and that's where I'm hearing the contrast between Abbey Road and Let It Be. Everyone knew what the Beatles could do, what potential there was when these guys got down to business. Put the right scenario together, put them in the right atmosphere, and the magic would come out, maybe not as much as in earlier years but it could still be found.

Look at "Ballad Of John And Yoko"...is it a great piece of songwriting? Perhaps not, it's an old-time rocker with John's life in the lyrics. But damn, doesn't that record *sound* and *feel* good when you hear it? It's only John and Paul, strip away all the personal and business issues of 1969, they're playing music together in the studio as if they were 16 playing music in a living room in Liverpool. It's that magic, that chemistry, and it comes out in the performance.

I think they pulled it together for Abbey Road, they got back into the groove again, they brought back Geoff Emerick and George Martin for full participation as they had done in the awesome years of 66-67, they wanted to do it the way it needed to be done. Thus, Abbey Road is full of life.

The times I do see that Beatle magic during Let It Be was on the rooftop - they're playing as a band, and some parts they appear to be having fun, even though George looks bored a lot of the time. This is why I think that rooftop concert has become so iconic - as dreary as they looked and played inside the ol' airplane hangar studio, they did come to life on that roof and played some good rock and roll. If the music they played on the roof had not been good, the concert would not survive as an iconic moment in rock.

Again, are the Abbey Road songs or song fragments stellar examples of the Beatles' songwriting prowess? Some perhaps, some perhaps not. But Abbey Road has a certain sparkle to it that even Spector and his magic dust couldn't capture no matter how much "work" he did with the Get Back tapes, because the band was not into the project as much as on Abbey Road. Even if the participation was knowingly going out with a bang by making a great record.

You only need to play Let It Be back-to-back with Abbey Road to see what a difference certain elements could make on an album. Considering they were both recorded the same year, why was one such a glorious success, one of the most-celebrated and beloved albums of the 60's, while the other is best remembered for a few good singles and for being a swansong?

I said it in my earlier post, I think Spector gets credit for creating a viable album from the Get Back tapes, but beyond that it's up for debate and always will be. And that's not to say "Let It Be...Naked" was the elixir, in fact I bought that album and was more than underwhelmed by what I heard. There was no spark, no magic.

It reinforced the view even more that the root problems of Let It Be went far beyond the mixes and arrangements. The effort just wasn't there.

It can be amazing to read how many artists were moved to change what they were doing after experiencing The Band's vibe in the late 60's, whether through the music or through direct contact. I think it was the kind of group scenario many artists wished they had, the more pure and simple way of moving into a house and making music then recording it in that same house, and the music being less flashy, less of a highlight on individual members and blazing solos, and more of a cooperative experience.

Clapton changed his entire outlook on music, life, and the guitar after getting immersed in The Band, and he was perhaps the hottest musician in England in 1968...eventually he chucked it all, got rid of the albatross which was Cream, and became basically a touring sideman for Delaney And Bonnie, as did George Harrison, remember. I think that was both his and George's closest substitute for that image of The Band being a bunch of down-home, music-loving guys who would hang out and make real music on their own terms.

Clapton, let's be honest, couldn't escape the "God" label nor could he live up to it, and he was surrounded by a drummer who favored 30 minute drum solos and a bassist with an ego to match the volume of his bass solos. George,  John+Paul - nothing more needs to be said! Then they see and hear The Band, a true *group* and not soloists, and it was very appealing.

Delaney and Bonnie probably thought they'd won the f***ing lottery when Clapton and Harrison wanted to join them.

The ones on Sphinx are "Alive and Smiling" and "Good Vibrations: Smile".  "Alive and Smiling" is the one with live tracks. It's an old one. There's another old one too called "Smile - Bits and Pieces".

I have GEMA Smile, a 2-disc set which bundled one CD of the standard Linett-Vigotone stuff with that "Bits And Pieces" disc.

I chose that one over the others, the day I got it, because it came with a free poster. Yep.

A few points to consider in the conversation:

First, there is a connection between John's "leadership" role diminishing and his increased intake of LSD. "Hang On To Your Ego" - Lennon was tripping heavily in 1967, and one of the casualties was his ego and his outspoken nature. He has revealed this himself in interviews he gave later, and how he also eventually got his "ego" back after he stopped the daily/regular doses of LSD. But even observers noticed a change in his personality - while he was still the ad hoc leader of the group, he wasn't near as vocal and more often he'd be withdrawn and in a daze instead of what people knew him to be. As he got off the LSD, as he got burned by his trust in TM and the Maharishi, as he got more involved with Yoko, he also got more involved in heroin, and the drug seemed to fuel his anger and his outward hostility to a degree even beyond where it was before he began the heavy LSD routine. Look where his creativity was channeled in the larger part of 1969 - is there much output we could term "pretty" or positive about his music, or is it more often nasty, angry, harsh, or downright bizarre and experimental?

I feel it may have created a Catch-22 for McCartney, because when John was withdrawn and uninvolved in 1967, due to the LSD, McCartney had to step up to the plate and make something happen. Not that Lennon stepped aside by choice but rather by default. Then as Lennon was in the midst of his heroin addiction, he had so many other things going on, yet the "old Lennon" was coming back, the old angry Lennon, it couldn't have worked out.

Not that there were not certain moments of fun and "the good old days" of the Beatles, but the project was doomed by so many elements from the start.

The other fascinating angle for me was one I only heard about in recent years, and that was the role of George Harrison. He had made a trip to the USA in 1968, and for all intents and purposes he was greeted and treated as rock royalty. He held court with some of the best established and hippest breakout artists, he had requests to produce or work with various outside artists, in short he was becoming "GEORGE HARRISON" as much as "BEATLE George". His ego and his confidence got a major boost from being with those outsiders, as most of his professional world was insulated within the Beatles and deferring, naturally, to John and Paul within that structure.

It had to have been a rush, and I think that time spent away from the Beatles in '68 was what fueled George's intense run of creativity in 1969. His songwriting was at its peak, and I say that objectively when you tally up what he did in that year. Even songs he brought into the Get Back-Let It Be project were tried but dismissed by The Beatles but later turned up on All Things Must Pass, to great critical acclaim. George Is Free!, they heralded in the praise of the album, yet he had a pocketful of those songs ready in January 1969 and nothing happened. I have one recording of the sessions where George starts talking about taking all his songs and putting them out as a solo album, remember this is Jan. 1969 and he already felt like saying "f*ck it" and doing his own thing.

Imagine coming back from The States where you were welcomed as rock's elite, and your musical input was welcomed and requested, then you return to the Beatles where you're given the "#3" badge, sitting across from Paul who's telling you what he'd like on a certain track as John sits lost with Yoko and Ringo sits and waits. And you're all in a former aircraft hangar pretending you're working in a studio with camera crews milling about...George was mad for a reason, and ultimately with All Things Must Pass, a good portion written for and immediately after Get Back, he was vindicated. He had good songs.

Can't we piece together where the tracks come from on those early releases by reading the Preiss book? Every Smile era track or recording that is described in detail would eventually be found on one of the early "Preiss Tape" based Smile albums, with filler and non-Smile joke tracks like Miles Davis.

"I found the Fire tapes!"

FTR, the Prokopy tapes were compilations of basically the best-of-the-boots and filling in some gaps from the GV box set. He had a 2-tape set of Smile going around in 1993, and I think that wasn't even the first version...(and he created his own stereo mix of "CIFOTM" by synching two different mixes)

Basically, it was a way for people to hear the best out there without having to fork over $25-$30 per CD to hear it...

And the liner notes were much better!

Phil was the reason Let it Be came out, he had to piece together hours of song fragments just to have a bare song to overdub.

No he didn't.  Spector worked from the same cache of tapes that Glyn Johns did in preparing his mixes, the only difference is for some reason Glyn Johns decided to all but ignore both the rooftop concert and the Apple Studio Performance in preparing his mixes while Spector used these performances as the backbone of his mix.  Then came the overdubs...

The tearing down the wall of sound book by Mick Brown said Spector had to spend hours going through the tapes of the Beatles jamming and rehearsing to piece together songs to overdub.

Another case of someone writing about The Beatles without doing their proper research I'm afraid.  Honestly out of all the books that have been written about The Beatles in the past forty years there are still probably only a very small handful (say between 10-20 books) that actually know the subject matter which they are writing about.

This is true, and it's important to remember just how much of a debacle the entire Get back-Let It Be project was for almost all involved. It strayed *so far* from the original concept, which apparently was Paul wishing to book a series of three "comeback" concerts in London and hiring a director (Michael Lindsey-Hogg got the gig) to film them for a television special.

It was full of debates, arguments, petty squabbles, and a very addicted Lennon, a very mad Harrison, an overbearing McCartney, and a passive Ringo who just went through the motions. All of the glossing over of what this period really was about is a bit odd but it does put more attention on the music, good or bad. Part of the reason why the rooftop concert came to be was that it was a compromise in order to get the band back together after the walk-outs. The compromise was apparently to scrap the television concerts idea and do the rooftop instead.

George Martin was there - notice he's in the film and more in the film outtakes. He didn't end up doing the final album mixing. They brought in Glyn Johns to mix, he did at least 2 acetate pressings of "Get Back" featuring "songs" like Teddy Boy, but Lennon for one was not happy.

Those Glyn John early mixes are the ones that formed some of the earliest Beatles bootlegs, and they "leaked" enough in the US that radio stations played them on the air, first in Buffalo, then most famously on WBCN in Boston - that 'BCN tape-sourced broadcast was the "source" for the first bootleg of the album and sessions. Rolling Stone magazine reviewed it!

The hilarious part - and there are sources but it's still in question - is that John Lennon himself was the source of this Glyn Johns acetate getting leaked, with some even suggesting (Lennon himself apparently one of them...) that he had traded the acetate for other recordings during a visit to the US. Lennon - the pioneering bootlegger. if this is urban legend or myth which has been debunked, please correct what I just wrote!

So eventually after George Martin, Glyn Johns, the original concept, the whole ball of wax, etc. got discarded and dumped, Phil Spector was brought in.

His role has been somewhat overstated, as he certainly did not wade through the tape library to cull the performances but rather used what had already been logged and edited by Martin and Johns as a template. Most of his work involved the sweetening and overdubbing of the orchestra and voices.

Read Emerick's book for an inside look at what a debacle that was. To summarize, Spector was acting like a spoiled kid, demanding things in a loud voice such as "I must have more strings!" and playing games with the engineer where one would turn down the volume and the other would immediately reach over and turn it up. Ringo was the only Beatle there, and he basically was there to mediate and help cool things down, and he had to pull Spector aside after things got too testy.

At that point, the Beatles didn't really care, they just wanted something to put out. Lennon is the hard one to read, because at the same time he'd say he didn't like the Glyn Johns mixes but he was glad to see them come out to kill the Beatles mythology. And on the rooftop he seems to be having a jolly old time rocking out in his fur coat and sneakers, but he's always said it was a miserable time and he was addicted in a bad way during the filming.

Let It Be was a mess, and Spector was a temperamental mess as he worked on it, at least according to those who were there. The credit he should get is that he managed to put something together for a release - exactly what he put together and how he did it is up for debate.

No, but the album has some great songs - Let It Be, Get It Back, I've Got a Feeling, Two of Us, Across The Universe. Those are all great.

I agree with these, those are all highlights and good standalone songs and performances. But they didn't release the *best* version of Across The Universe, the best which I think is the most stripped down version that's out there, until years later. They badly mishandled that song, which is a great song.

What Goes On

I tend to agree. The only thing that partially saves it for me is George's guitar picking.

Honey Pie is dreadful. Til There Was You is so boring. Doctor Robert is pretty far down there, especially when considering the material on Revolver.

As far as them being lesser tunes compared to what surrounds them on those albums, I tend to agree, but I'd like to illustrate the point we were bouncing around in earlier posts about the Beatles being able to add that elusive something to a song to make it worth a listen:

Honey Pie: Retro, song-and-dance 20's/30's vibe for sure, you can only take that schtick so far as I'm sure all the soul singers who currently wish to sound more like Otis Redding than themselves will find out soon (sorry... ). But that guitar solo...that's John Lennon jazzing all over the place on that. Even George Harrison said he was taken aback by what John played, and thought it sounded like Django Reinhardt or something. Jazz, coming from John, the guitar basher, of all people. One highlight.

Dr. Robert: Not much to latch onto, but the Beach Boys-leaning vocal breaks are pretty neat. Some interesting guitar sounds and textures in the breaks, and during the fade...pretty unique sounds and phrases.

Till There Was You: Pleasant vocal, not much else, *but* George's guitar solo...I think the Beatles were trying to show off the fact that they could play the "songbook" standards too and weren't just a three-chord-rock flash in the pan. Diminished chords! Chromatics! Jazz phrasing! And if you watch that first Ed Sullivan broadcast when they do this tune, George actually tops himself by playing a flawless solo on electric rather than his classical acoustic from the record.

And I'm not Bruce...

As far as all-time favorites, I liked them before I knew who Geoff Emerick was! But it's hard to top in any era of rock and pop that handful of albums that Geoff Emerick engineered, including Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, and all related singles in between, then coming back again for Abbey Road.

It was a near-perfect combination of a band wanting to break new ground and a young, a *really young* engineer who had the same things in mind. Nothing couldn't be tried, nothing was off-limits. The time the Beatles were reaching an artistic and creative peak lined up at the exact moment they needed those technical people around them who were willing to go outside the regulations and standards and try new things. What a match.

Beatles, Emerick, Martin, 66-67...phenomenal.

I say this 100% honestly: Beatles For Sale is actually one of my favorite go-to Beatles albums, the one I'll reach for more often to get a fix of the Beatles. I can't explain why, but it just is.

Least favorite is hard, very tough to call. I certainly wouldn't put Beatles For Sale *anywhere* behind Yellow Submarine or Let It Be.

Honestly, besides the title track and Get Back, what on Let It Be can stand next to the average track on Beatles For Sale?

The fact that the Beatles were world-weary, were tired, and were barely able to sneak in studio time while touring the world might have something to do with why I like the performances. The album sounds good, minus a few exceptions.

Let It Be the overall album sounds forced, lifeless, and cold. EXCEPT the title track, which is an absolute masterpiece, a fantastic record. And Get Back, which rocks like a motherfucker.

Bruce showed up on another board too - was that Male Ego? - around 2005(?) I can't remember. Anyway, he had a week where he started posting and went into his influences, among them "I Only Have Eyes For You" by the Flamingos which is one of the most beautiful and haunting records ever made...I'll never get over how they got those sounds...and arranger Nelson Riddle. I passed on some info about a Nelson Riddle biography that an alum from my high school had written, and it was neat to interact with him.

I always wanted to know if he had a chance to pick up that Riddle bio and what he thought of it.

And if Bruce is reading this, it would be a thrill to hear "I Only Have Eyes For You" added to the reunion set list. I've often though what a killer of a cover song that would be to hear those full Beach Boys vocals.

Wow...gotta agree big time with you, Bruce and Cam..."I Only Have Eyes For You" is one of the most dramatic arrangements ever put to wax. The song absolutely turns me to jello. The Platters "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" has a similar effect on me...as does the BB's "Kiss Me Baby"...and DW's "Thoughts of You". We could start a thread...Songs That Make You Cry. Those four would be high on my list.

It's always a nice thing to see others who share these kinds of thoughts on certain songs, albums, etc. Bruce for one notable example, that was awesome when he posted that stuff! He grew up with it when it was a new record - at the time I got obsessed with "I Only Have Eyes For You" it was the farthest thing from what was in the popular culture - but a record like that transcends generations, the great ones always do. But I'm glad I had oldies radio to hear it unexpectedly for a "drop everything, crank it up" moment, which is the best way to hear a great tune on the radio - and well before "oldies" radio turned into a sterile place to hear things like the fucking Footloose soundtrack and John Mellencamp.

In my opinion they make a case for being the only band that doesn't have a bad song in their catalog.  The reason being is because in my opinion even if the lyrics aren't there there is something in the performance that makes it worth listening to.  "Mr. Moonlight" plods along at the pace of a snail but John's vocal on it throughout is just amazing.  "Little Child" may be the definition of a throwaway pop song but again that vocal on it is incredible. 

i love little child it reminds me of our dog!

Not just the vocal - I remember getting one of those really thick old Capitol pressings of Meet The Beatles at a flea market...playing the whole thing, one of the highlights of an admittedly "lesser" track on the album was John's harmonica solo. That solo cooks! It jumped out of the ol' hi-fi, I remember lifting the needle and replaying the solo several times.

And Mr. Moonlight...agreed, it's a lesser cover overall, but John's vocal intro is one of the *best* vocals he's ever done. The first thing you hear knocks you out, then the record sort of drops in intensity, but how could it live up to that vocal intro, anyway? Paul's theater organ solo break, I always loved the tone and feel of that. Two key elements like those make a lesser song memorable, such was the brilliance of the Beatles.

You're right, John...every Beatles song has *something* that makes it worth your attention. If there are exceptions, like a song that offers practically nothing of interest, I can't think of them in what they released.

Bruce showed up on another board too - was that Male Ego? - around 2005(?) I can't remember. Anyway, he had a week where he started posting and went into his influences, among them "I Only Have Eyes For You" by the Flamingos which is one of the most beautiful and haunting records ever made...I'll never get over how they got those sounds...and arranger Nelson Riddle.

Love that. It is so gorgeously atmospheric.

It's a record that you can't shake off or forget, you hear it and you just get lost in the sounds. I can't explain what it is, how they did it, etc etc...it leaves you speechless once you've connected with that record. Incredible. I wasn't surprised to hear it was a favorite of Bruce's, it was really neat to hear him mention it, though.

I'm a big fan of those "Desert Island Discs" interviews as they reveal a lot about the artists,  and I'd love to hear one of those lists from each of the Beach Boys. Although we can guess Brian's top choices...Be My Baby, Rhapsody In Blue, etc...