It's 12/4 and we do need a thread commemorating Dennis' birthday...we are 39 years past the last one he experienced while he was still with us, and one of the best things that's happened over that period is the rediscovery and release of so much more of his work that had been salted away for so long.

I've always enjoyed the coincidence of sharing a birthday with him, and this year is no exception. We've gotten many early Xmas presents in the SOS set, including revelatory looks at Dennis' work during the CATP and Holland sessions, with "Carry Me Home" and the deeper dive into tracks such as "Steamboat," "Make It Good" and "Cuddle Up."

It's just another reason to celebrate Dennis' natal day, and to remember him in all of his "live a fast life" complexity.

Thanks, Dennis...and RIP. You are not forgotten!

If you don't own it already, you're getting a mess of help from McFarland to buy it at 40% off list price. Here's the link:

https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/becoming-the-beach-boys-1961-1963/

40% off list price is good through November 28, afterwards it reverts to a 25% discount.

As noted elsewhere, BECOMING THE BEACH BOYS is definitely among the top five books ever written about the band.

Excellent stuff, Jim...the caffeination was a good thing! Very much looking forward to Part Two...

BECOMING THE BEACH BOYS is easily one of the five best books about the band and is essential for everyone who becomes enamored with their music.

Steve Lewis is making some savvy choices in terms of the guests he's bringing onto his excellent YouTube channel.

Anyone who's not visited Jim's "companion" site for the book needs to click this link ASAP:

https://becomingthebeachboys.com/

Lots of extra material there, all of it informative and highly enjoyable--just like the book.

Yes, clearly there's at least some level of effort being expended to engender some healing and solidarity in the band at this point, what with an important box set coming out in a month and in need of as much buzz as it's possible to muster. It's obvious that Mike is doing "what he can and oughta" in support of a very creative and frenetic time frame for the BBs, one that can be positioned to appeal to a broader, present-day audience. My guess is that he'll keep the distortion to a minimum, and give Carl a lot of credit for his work during the period. (Let's not forget the CATP production credit, with its "especially Carl" annotation.)

From the standpoint of making an interview with Mike about this period produce the most value in putting across the SOS/CATP set, that's what I think is the way to frame it. Perhaps those in attendance will let us know how it went...and assuming it's filmed, maybe we'll see it for ourselves sometime next month.

Great as always, Joshilyn! There was a question/comment on YouTube regarding the "target" instrumental mixes that you're using for these, which was based on an assumption that one of those "target" sources comes from the session tapes from the UM/SOT disks. (I think they were suggesting that a later take of "Let Him Run Wild" seemed to be the "target" as opposed to the one actually designated as the master.) Just curious as to how that aspect of things gets worked into your re-creations.
 
And that leads to one other question: what level of difference/change have you noticed from the SOT master takes and what actually got pressed to record? I would imagine that this, too, varies from track to track, with some being identical to others with some audibly noticeable changes.

Late to the party, but belated kudos! Moving nicely in the direction of jaywalker6's "psychedelic" recasting of the band as a whole, but with more focus on the anarchic undercurrent that took hold of the project (via those fresh overdubs). SMiLE can still be what imaginative minds decide to make it! 

It was my idea to lead off with "Mess Of Help." I think it spotlights everything hot and new about this era in a solid punch.
It screams "FM" and underscores what a powerhouse this lineup was on stage.
Carl nailing a new Brian tune with the band smoking and singing their asses off. You can't go wrong.
 

A great, great track (one of my absolute faves from listening #2 back in the day) that got lost in the WTF? shuffle back in '72 and more than deserves a shot at total redemption. I hadn't heard the Carnegie live version before, and it sounds like Carl reworked some things from the earlier live versions in order to give it a more distinct concert context--folks at shows don't tend to relate as well to "fade outs" as they're able to do with studio versions. There's some added power in the transition to the "She don't know..." middle 8/tag that takes it up another notch and does exactly what Howie says--these guys could really bring it on stage back then.

Great call, Howie. Looking forward to hearing the whole shebang in November. I predict a great deal of critical and commercial success for this one, which will go a long, long way toward realizing all of the objectives, hopes and desires so many have had regarding the '72 material as the being knockout punch for putting the band back on top of the heap legacy-wise, once and for all.

Glad to see Mark and Howie popping in...gives us all a boost to help us hang on until the set gets released...

Seconding PetSmile's "think and wish and hope and pray" on SOS. The last truly transcendent anthem from the band really needs as much historical coverage as possible, and that includes at least some portion of the legendary demo.

Adam--excellent work! These just keep getting better and better.

Curious if you can pinpoint WHEN these songs were written relative to one another and present that in a summary kind of way somewhere in part two, as I think there's an evolutionary step toward PET SOUNDS in the songs written closer to the release of TODAY. Some of that is sort of set aside for SUMMER DAYS as Brian works his way through and beyond his "Spector phase" and into his own unique production sounds, so I tend to think it's important to pinpoint the thread between the more introspective tracks in TODAY and how they are a key flowthrough point to PET SOUNDS. Just a thought--and, of course, if you've already wrapped up Part 2 and what's being suggested here is just not possible, so be it. But I think that would great to add in, and it makes sense to be in Part 2, because it covers the "introspective" side of TODAY...

Extremely enjoyable, Mark! I took a bit of a sunbath this afternoon with my "chick by my side" (OK, my iPad...) and listened to three engaging and eloquent guys having a wonderful conversation about a subject that never gets old (even though, alas, we all keep doing so). David's decision to keep the earlier material intact was both courageous and wise, and the new material is some of his best work, ripening mysteriously and magnificently like a top-vintage wine. I think the new material captures his authorial voice in a unique and compelling way that has never been quite so visible in his previous work, and that impression grows strong every time I spend additional time with the book.

The welcoming atmosphere and the cogent questions clearly allowed him to open things up a bit more for us, while still remaining true to his "Hippocratic oath" regarding his friendship with Brian. And...the show was just the right length so that I did not stay out in the sun too long (either physically or metaphorically!). 

I hope many will tune in, and that a large percentage of those who do will see fit to purchase the book. It's a keeper!

Some observations about the (semi-predictable) drift in this thread:

--Any SS thread dealing with Mike will wind up aimlessly rambling into ever-more quotidian quibbles over trivial and unprovable "facts."

--Steve M. has once again demonstrated the crippling effects of simultaneously thinking with one's dick and having a Viagra addiction. 

--If anyone here REALLY thinks that OSD is secretly "working for Mike," they've clearly had more than one too many "big dinners"! 

Mike is (was?) a great singer, a good lyricist (so long as he sticks to "boy-girl" stuff), and he has a strong work ethic. He's highly motivated to be the "last man standing" in the band. Everything else that one can say about him becomes potentially libelous, however, so we should all take care not to "poke the bear."

Good gravy, guys, what will the folk over at the Nearest Faraway Place start saying about us if we keep bashing "Mr. Positivity"?? 

Sadly, Mike took the low road at a point in time when he could have earned nearly infinite points by showing even a eyedropper's worth of compassion for Brian's health issues. He could easily have set aside all of that nonsense about drugs (and avoided sounding like an endless tape loop of Nancy Reagan) by referencing Brian's current situation with some measurable trace of sympathy, and by noting that his group would add more "deep cuts" to their shows in order to "take up the slack."

He had a golden opportunity to access and transmit a healing moment. And, once again, he failed, utterly and abysmally.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose...

Very nice, thank you!

Other external factors would be Carl getting drafted, the Beach Boys suing Capitol, Brian seeing "Seconds"...

According to IMDB, SECONDS was released on October 2, 1966, though some sources say October 5. The film did poorly at the box office (the figure most often cited was $1.75 million) so it's likely that Brian saw it sometime in October...possibly early November.

Very nice diagram! You might want to flesh it out a bit further by adding the sessions for the "SMiLE remakes"--"Wind Chimes" and "Wonderful," then extending into the "reworked" tracks such as "Fall Breaks" (with its connection to "Fire") and "She's Goin' Bald" (with its connection to "He Gives Speeches") in the June-July '67 time frame.

I'd also suggest using a different color for the day annotations for those June-July '67 sessions, to make it clear that we are now talking about SMILEY SMILE sessions, not SMiLE sessions. I know you were differentiating between '66 and '67 SMiLE session with the two colors, but I'd contend that a third color is needed to show all of the ways that the SMiLE material morphed into SMILEY SMILE.

Thanks Don, I wasn't planning on including the SS sessions, but since its only a month, why not. I made those sessions a new color, including the May Da-Da sessions. If you (or anyone) could link me to some SS recording dates I can get them put in on the chart. 

From Bellagio, it looks like the dates for the relevant tracks (those that link back to SMiLE) are:

6/29 Fall Breaks... 7/5 She's Goin' Bald 7/10-11 Wind Chimes 7/12 Wonderful

If you decide that you want to go further, all of the dates for the SMILEY sessions are on this page: http://www.bellagio10452.com/gigs67.html

Very nice diagram! You might want to flesh it out a bit further by adding the sessions for the "SMiLE remakes"--"Wind Chimes" and "Wonderful," then extending into the "reworked" tracks such as "Fall Breaks" (with its connection to "Fire") and "She's Goin' Bald" (with its connection to "He Gives Speeches") in the June-July '67 time frame.

I'd also suggest using a different color for the day annotations for those June-July '67 sessions, to make it clear that we are now talking about SMILEY SMILE sessions, not SMiLE sessions. I know you were differentiating between '66 and '67 SMiLE session with the two colors, but I'd contend that a third color is needed to show all of the ways that the SMiLE material morphed into SMILEY SMILE.

Excellent stuff as always, especially love that section where you add in the "room sound" which would be fun to track across the different recording locations. I'm not certain that the following notion is going to be as revelatory or as useful as I think it might be, but hearing songs as "they would sound" in different recording room ambiences could make for interesting listening, just as is the case when you take out all the reverb out of "Rhonda" for a few seconds.

BTW, here's a YouTube link for this video, which doesn't appear to be in the original post:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhe3Vrxz1eo

I don't know what the overall conditions have been like for this year's tour schedule, but for men entering their 80s a summer tour is a brutal proposition even under the best circumstances. Travel is itself a major issue, and given that Brian has had chronic back issues for awhile now, this aspect in and of itself could be taking enough of a toll that the best course of action was to pull the plug. This also seems to have been one of the more poorly conceived tour setups for Brian, essentially playing second fiddle to a lesser group: it may have been sold to Brian etal as an "easier" gig, possibly with some economic perks. And it was a way to be out there in front of the public as some kind of recompense for not having a reunion tour for the 60th.

But none of that matters if Brian (or Al or Mike or Bruce) are putting themselves at risk by touring. And with COVID still an issue, they are doing so--even without taking into account any other health issues that may also be in play. We can all appreciate them for making the effort, but it's unreasonable to expect them to take health risks in an attempt to defy the realities of time.

This is one of those situations where "an ounce of prevention" may well be the best course of action. I hope that by having done this, they will have left open the possibility we may still get a proper farewell tour--not too strenuous, scheduled in the fall with dates later into the season in the warmer regions, and with some kind of attention to the portions of Brian's oeuvre that were being omitted/bypassed in this tour.

Given what we know he was doing to Brian, I think it would be hard for many folks to listen to Gene Landy for 90 minutes unless they were at least semi-professional historians writing a book or an article about the Beach Boys and/or Brian Wilson. I listened for a few minutes, and then my desire to punch the guy out took over! 

So I stopped.

It's clearly a valuable historical document and all that, but...

This isn't to knock seltaeb for finding and posting this...for those with a more dispassionate approach--and better impulse control! 

I don't think there's much mystery behind the use of Smile tracks on 20/20. And although Brian consented, he was reluctant about their inclusion and hands-off with it.

Not speculative, Dennis went on record saying that they had to go back and find things Brian had left behind because he'd stopped actively participating. The sessions for 20/20 began with a Brian-led run of sessions for almost an a full album of songs in the summer, but most of those weren't completed, and activity drifted for months between touring until the group were facing an imminent delivery deadline. In September a lengthy list of potential songs for the album was drawn up (probably by Carl and Dennis) with notes on their status - some recorded that needed work, some originals that hadn't yet been taken into the studio, some ideas for covers, and some older tracks from the vault - with almost all of Brian's tracks from the May-July '68 sessions given a look, along with Iron Horse, Surf's Up, and Cool Water.

It was probably easier, and more comfortable at this point, for the rest of the band to record newer material rather than finish off Brian's recent work on his behalf when he didn't want to go back to it, which is where I Can Hear Music, Bluebirds and most of the Dennis songs enter the picture. But the Smile tracks were a looming exception that they knew the value of and had wanted to finish, with Brian alluding to some group argument that year over his refusal to use the material while he was still taking a more active leadership role. Prayer was already effectively done and only sweetened while Cabin Essence was close enough that Carl could add the finishing touches without stepping on Brian's toes. Considering they were in the last week of a tight deadline and looking for some strong Brian contributions that could be completed without too much work, those were obvious candidates.

Other parts of Smile were still in the air in '68. David Anderle got wind that Child is Father of the Man would be on Brian's next album, which ended up happening via Little Bird. My Only Sunshine and the original version of Wonderful were reviewed with Stack-O-Tracks material in January. Workshop, Our Prayer and Cabin Essence were used on 20/20, while the original Wind Chimes was also given a safety copy and Surf's Up was evidently still hanging in the background.

All interesting, but it really doesn't explain how the tracks went from being set aside in summer '67 to moving slowly under the band's control, especially since the band was at least part of the reason why the original material was set aside. The question that still needs to be answered is what happened to change around the notion that Engemann documented about a "10-track SMiLE LP" and what happened to Brother Records (since it was supposed to be a label for band members to sign other artists and, theoretically at least, work on solo projects).

The impression one gets from your wording is that Carl and Dennis were doing some kind of back-door advocacy for those tracks during '68. Up to this point the BBs had only released two significantly different versions of a song on one occasion ("Help Me Rhonda"). Brian had re-appropriated a few melodies in other released recordings ("Thinking 'Bout You Baby" and "Darlin'", and "Car Crazy Cutie" and "Pamela Jean") but those were for "other artists." Of course, a "10-track SMiLE LP" along the lines of what Engemann thought he'd be getting would have to use some of those original SMiLE recordings that were reworked for SMILEY SMILE, so some redundancy would have occurred that way.

I'm afraid we still don't know what the actual dynamic was about this material as it moved from July '67 through to the decision in the fall of '68 to grab two of the unreleased tracks for 20/20. The first question that might come to mind for followers of the various SMiLE tales is how Mike's objections to "Cabinessence" were gotten around. Has anyone ever had the chutzpah to ask Mike about the circumstances behind it winding up as an official release at that time? Inquiring minds want to know...

As Liz speculated earlier, the Redwood incident may have kiboshed any ideas that Brian had about going on with any kind of outside project. As it was in October '67, he had his hands full getting WILD HONEY together: the band had made it clear that they needed a new LP right away since SMILEY was floundering and there was no track on it that could be used as a single. Which is why "Wild Honey" was cut in late September, with Brian apparently thinking that he could then bounce back and forth from various projects. As it turned out, "Darlin'" was a bigger hit than "Wild Honey," and drove the WILD HONEY LP sales in the first months of '68.

But that's the "forward-facing" territoriality, if you will. What about the "backward-facing" territoriality? If the "10-track SMiLE" and Brother Records were both kiboshed in fall '67, did Brian throw up his hands about the SMiLE material right then and there? The amount of "Child" in "Little Bird" isn't enough to kill off a return to SMiLE, but a family ultimatum that Brian had to see through a transition to a fully functioning band (meaning songwriting/production as well as their already-separate touring) before venturing out to work with outside artists could have done so. Something changed regarding this in the fall-winter of '67-'68. And then something changed in Brian after those sessions he led after FRIENDS that stalled out with only two released songs ("Do It Again" and "I Went to Sleep"), which led to a scramble in the fall to come up with tracks. This was Brian's first real "fallow period," with no new songs (though folks suggest he was still involved in some of the sessions, such as the first "Cottonfields").

It's clear that the downward spiral for Brian, where the "manic" phase mostly disappears, occurs in the second half of '68. What did the escalating tug of war over the remaining unused SMiLE tracks have to do with that? And how much of it was his desire/need to withdraw from a situation where he'd tried to have some cake and eat it too on FRIENDS, and becoming vulnerable to backlash when the LP tanked?

I'm not trying to "go Gaines" on this, but there are still some unanswered questions here that can illuminate some of the remaining dark corners in the time frame, corners that certainly appear to stem from the lingering effects of SMiLE.

It is agreat record, I agree. Should've been a bigger hit imo. But I wonder how they would have performed it on stage. It seems even harder than "Good Vibrations".

Wonderful video! I hope you won't run out of ideas 

I understand what you're saying in terms of the 1966 time frame, but clearly Brian and his band figured out how to do it quite successfully some years later. I think if Carl had put his mind to it (of which there is no evidence that such ever happened way back when) he probably could have figured it out. Though he'd have needed to schlep (or rent) an organ around in those pre-synth days.

Amazing, though, how a song that made it to #20 could just disappear from view. It was included on one of the Pickwick LPs in the early 70s, with the usual strange assortment of time periods and styles. That was where I first ran across it, recognizing after a few listens that it was not too many notches down from GV (which was also on that disk).

I was thinking a version of Stack-o-Tracks for the instrumentals that weren't on the LP, but a physical release of a select portion of this built around the videos (whose charm and cleverness can be "changed up" now and again with the offbeat taken a bit further...) could be a way to self-fund more research. People get a great product, and they pay for it: more concrete than donating. You just need a label--how about Capitol? It's another way into the music, and much of what you'd be recreating wouldn't be available.

"Stacking the Tracks with Joshilyn!"

I also loved the little trick of shutting down each little screen separately at the end of the track--nice deadpan humor, there.

Seconded...and it's a shame it's not on SOUNDS OF SUMMER where it belongs--what a great, great song!

A very nice conversation between these two...it wanders a bit, but there are many fine moments along the way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxh34SPiWuY

Do you not think that the Redwood incident may be the actual moment that Brian knew he was not going to be able to bring out Smile with the band, with someone else or on his own?

The review for Rolling Stone didn't even mention Smile only Smiley Smile. [“Cabinessence,” the last cut on the second side, is one of the finest things Brian has ever done, a product of the Smiley Smile collaboration with Parks, whose extraordinary gift it is to make a cliche grow into a world: “Lost and found you still remain there/I’ll find a meadow filled with reindeer [ ] —/I’ll build you a home on the range.” The totally orchestrated cacophony was an innovation in rock when they used it in Smiley Smile, and is still done here better than anywhere else. Piano imitates ukelele, and the solo vocal is gentle, but brilliant.]

So clearly they didn't do much in the way of promotion of 20/20 or else didn't want them to know about Cabinessence being on Smile.  I can remember Brian emphasising with some force  in an interview, but can't remember where, that Cabinessence was from Smile.  Clearly it was significant to him.  I think a lot of the album was over shadowed by Manson.

The Tate-LaBianca murders happened in August of '69; 20/20 was released in February. So no shadow of Manson, except as shadow writer on the one track, which wasn't common knowledge when the LP was released. My guess is that the lack of promotion came from the continuing deterioration of the relationship between the band and Capitol.

But none of that gets us anywhere near the question of why the band felt they needed to put two cuts from SMiLE on the record. Let's also recall that "Cabinessence" was one of the tracks where VDP's lyrics had sent Mike into an "acid alliteration" tizzy.

Engemann memo was in late July '67; Redwood incident was mid-October. Outside production jobs and remaining SMiLE tracks don't naturally fall in the same category, so Brian may not have made that connection. And we don't know how committed Brian really was to actually creating an "10-track SMiLE LP." At any rate, it never appears, and WILD HONEY is released on Capitol, not Brother, that December.

But Brian works his a** off on WILD HONEY and FRIENDS, though with the latter LP he finds ways to indulge in some unorthodox tracks that were vulnerable to being pointed to as a big part of the reason that FRIENDS tanked commercially. Then in November '68, the two SMiLE tracks are sweetened/completed. One speculative explanation was that the band didn't have enough tracks to fill out the LP, but we know now that there were a lot of other tracks in vaults at the time that were passed over to specifically put those two songs on 20/20.

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

Very good question, and thanks for asking! Certainly the latter, and I think the former statement is also something that we can say with near certainty.

Let me explain the context of these sessions a little bit more - on December 27 and 28, Brian was working on Heroes, and these were the first dates that the song was officially incorporated with what were previously the choruses of Do You Like Worms (bicycle rider) and Cabin Essence (iron horse), which were now bridges of Heroes. Brian was working on his own, so the work here was limited to lead vocals and mixing, which was achieved for the Heroes verse and bicycle rider, and just mixing for iron horse (all necessary vocals were in place). He also worked on Wonderful in some capacity, possibly recording a new lead vocal, creating a new mono mix, or both. Either way, that work is lost to time. Wonderful was possibly a B-side for Heroes at this point.

But he also did these Da Da tracks, and the song appeared to be in 3 sections - the DYLW verse (a section from a dead song, which was now an intro for a new piece - note the similarities in arrangement/feel and harmonic rhythm to the later LTSDD part 1), the Rhodes section, and the taped piano section. Recorded in the same modular fashion as many Smile songs by this point. As DYLW had effectively been killed off for the sake of Heroes, this appears to be an attempt to fill the hole that Brian had created in the project. This is why I agree with you that Smile was a salvageable project by the end of 1966 - Brian, at first, seemed to be a lot more careful in his destruction of other songs, by either letting them work without the section he used for Heroes (Cabin Essence was to be chorus-less by now) or writing a new song to incorporate the remaining pieces. Later, he would give no thought to this destruction, and it would rule out a great number of compositions from being included on the album.

Wind Chimes on Smiley Smile contains the melody and lyrics of... well, Wind Chimes, but the fade is the same music as Holidays! Does that mean Holidays and Wind Chimes were initially related? Nope, totally separate recordings, both their own songs, with ideas later combined in a new way. Same goes for dozens of variations of Heroes and Villains, and that's kind of where this really started to happen often - songs that were initially separate tracks being combined as one. It's a way to revive several incomplete ideas in a fresh way, without the need to use up more original music, and it's sort of beautiful, although destructive at times. This goes farther back than Smile, too. It's part of the essence of Brian's writing style, and it's a tool that never seemed to leave his "bag of tricks". He could be combining two unfinished songs as I type this.

This portion in the reply gets toward the core of what folks were reporting as early as Paul Williams' interview with David Anderle, where such switching around of parts was discussed as part of the project becoming stuck in its own gears, so to speak. But, having made those changes in an attempt to create a more "grandiose" version of H&V, and then leaving that by the roadside as well, we are really at the point where Brian could have conceivably gone back after he'd decided exactly what *was* going to be the released version of H&V (the single version that wound up on SMILEY) and restored the portions of the other songs that wound up being unused.

Which leads to the question of how and why "Cabinessence" was released, and how it was (apparently) found in an intact version using the sequence that was strung together earlier in December 1966. The "how" I think that the mega-scholars of SMiLE can easily cover, but the "why" is something that leads back into the area of inquiry that you folks really seem loath to discuss here. The fact that Brian felt happier (for a time) while he was putting SMILEY together is hardly surprising: given the intractable intensity he'd been dealing with during the previous month, a condition that had literally brought his prodigious work process to a halt, a resolution to the creative and interpersonal impasse that had been plaguing him must have been greeted with a sense of (creative) euphoria. (There are, however, audible examples of some "pain and strain" in the process, as manifested in the UM bootleg disk for SMILEY; as much of a sense of relief at having a way out of the earlier impasse might have propelled the project, it still had to be gotten through, and underlying it had to be a sense that the band wasn't going to escape from critical and commercial backlash once the LP was released.)

But the problem was that it didn't last but another nine months, and in the real world the LPs that came out as a result of this temporary rejuvenation did not re-establish the Beach Boys as a top-of-the-line commercial entity (no matter how much we may love them now). And that clearly came back into the picture in mid-1968, when it appears that Brian hits another, different kind of creative wall--more akin to "writer's block" than "too many options". All of which eventually leads back to the question: why was "Cabinessence" (in its original configuration) revisited by Carl and Dennis and prepared for release on 20/20? What triggered the decision to do that? Was it some kind of end play by the band to ensure that the SMiLE material would not be something that Brian could revisit? Did they think that those two tracks would sell more records if they were included? (Not remembering any type of publicity campaign by Capitol trumpeting the presence of "lost SMiLE tracks"--that would take another two years to occur, when the band's commercial situation in America was even more problematic than was the case in the fall of '68.)

Was there some kind of internal tug-of-war that played out regarding what Brian could/could not do? The Redwood incident may only be the most visible manifestation of such a process that unfolded over that period. What we go from is a memo from Engemann where Brian seems on board with a 10-track version of SMiLE to be issued on Brother Records which can still use the booklet, to a situation where two tracks from SMiLE end up on a subsequent LP two years later that is back on Capitol. While these matters may not be as alluring to those who want to focus on the musical puzzles, they are fallout results from a series of after-events stemming from the music that (arguably, at least) need just as much attention from researchers.

Pardon any presumption on my part, but perhaps we can start to bring this sprawling thread to a point of closure by looking at the places where the best hard info about the SMiLE->SMILEY nexus can be found, so we can put it into the very pivotal perspective of what happened afterwards...

Will's data on what I like to call "the Wrecking Crew SMiLE" is a terrific summary, and highly useful as it was written; IMO the best application of it, however, would be to map that back against the track list for SMILEY SMILE and the 2004 BWPS to see how everything ultimately shook out. All of that, in a giant table, will still not completely resolve the issue that dominated a good portion of this thread (transition or profound break).

Since Brian went back and made the 2004 SMiLE, we should conclude that his response to the "SMILEY SMILE is SMiLE" assertion would be "no." But it's also abundantly clear that to make SMILEY SMILE, he was still caught up in the raw materials for SMiLE, which had swirled around in the January-March '67 "we need a single" phase that derailed his original vision. And the evidence that he was looking for alternatives to the "Wrecking Crew" approach to the material is sufficient enough to support the idea that he was at least subliminally preparing himself for what was done to create the SMILEY SMILE tracks.

So, in essence, both assertions are true--as far as each one of them goes.

What's received less emphasis here, due in part to the thread being directed to musicological concerns, is the band dynamic and how that played out from December '66 to June '67, when all parties undertook a fresh start on portions of the SMiLE material. From my perspective, the new information about the work done at Brian's studio (and the new material in the SUNSHINE TOMORROW and WAKE THE WORLD compilations tells us that Brian rallied from the ouroborous-like detritus of SMiLE and produced material at a prodigious rate for another ten months before something changed, at which point he became the reclusive, foregrounded "crazy/eccentric" character that folks originally surmised he'd become when SMiLE was "scrapped" (which we all know now didn't happen).

The understanding between Brian and the band must have been worked out in the late May '67 time frame GF has noted, but it appears that the understanding was fungible, as evidenced by the Redwood incident, which smacks of the notion that everyone in the band BUT Brian could be an outside producer. Despite this, the band worked as amicably on WILD HONEY as they had on SMILEY, but things shift once Brian has re-asserted some of his "offbeat/eccentric" qualities on FRIENDS (the worst selling BB LP to that point, despite the sizable retroactive love for it). It looks to me that this is where the crisis that was deflected/delayed by the decision to reboot SMILE(Y) really comes to the fore; the turmoil/uncertainty that comes into play here is due to the fact that the band is now dealing with a case of "a prophet is not without honor save in his own country" and folks could see a "crash & burn" scenario headed their way. It's at this point that the rest of the band really gets in gear to write their own songs, and Brian is much less active until returning with "Break Away" early in '69.

This discussion may seem that it's not really related to the main issues in the thread, but I submit it is, simply because Brian made the decision to set aside the maelstrom of approaches that had buffeted and battered his original plan for SMiLE in order to keep the band together and avoid a family meltdown. He could have said "To hell with you guys, I'm moving on." But it appears that he wanted to get them to a point where they could carry on credibly with at least a significantly reduced amount of input from him. After three LPs of mostly still being in charge and writing the lion's share of the material (SMILEY-WILD HONEY-FRIENDS), he probably realized that he'd have to pull the plug more drastically in order to get them to the point where they could operate in that matter. But lo and behold, SMiLE enters the picture again in late '68, when, during the onset of his depression and reclusive phase, the band (or, more specifically, Carl and Dennis) pick the carcass of SMiLE for two tracks to fill out the 20/20 LP. That ensures that SMiLE will always be a Beach Boy thing, and that any chance of Brian using the unreleased portion of it for his own purposes was quashed.

All of that probably (and what was done with COOL, COOL WATER and SURF'S UP) probably explains why it was twenty-five years before another chunk of SMiLE appeared (in the '93 box set) and another dozen years transpired before Brian was ready to deal with it on his own terms. Perhaps there were some moments along the way where Brian may have wished that he'd actually "scrapped" it all. Thankfully, the fact the the band rather perversely validated SMiLE by using it as a "come-on" for the media and the fans prevented any possibility of that happening. And, as Liz notes, it became necessary to use the "SMiLE myth" to lift the band out of its "discarded prophet" status with the release of "Surf's Up."