But if you choose to call Carl a liar and discredit everything he says, Cam...

I can't remember anybody here calling Carl a liar, and pointing out that one or two of his statements were inaccurate doesn't mean discrediting everything he says or judging him to be a bad person. In real life there is no black or white. Neither Brian or Carl are angels nor is Mike a devil - and vice versa of course. I don't think anybody here feels that Carl was an unsympathetic and unrespectable person. Quite the contrary.

And should Carl in fact have consciously bended the truth a little in his comments, I'm 100% sure he did what he felt what was best for the band and his brother Brian. And as someone said, Carl was being diplomatic. Is that a bad thing?

Now the suggestion of discrediting Carl appears in the discussion. In both this and the other Smile discussions, so far we have seen attempts or suggestions to discredit the following people: Carl, Brian, Al, Michael Vosse, David Anderle, Jules Siegel. Any others to add? Van Dyke perhaps? Anyone else?

First question: Let's say we do for whatever reasons. Just discredit them and their words regarding what they've said or written about Smile since 1967.

Someone tell me who that leaves as a solid and reliable source when it comes to telling the history of Smile moving forward?

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but every human being is fallible and there is nobody whose every word can be taken as gospel. Everybody's statements have to be checked for plausibility. That doesn't equal discrediting them completely.

It’s completely illogical to say that a person in a band, under enormous pressure, wouldn’t be impacted AT ALL by their mates’ opinions, frustrations, and questions. Our lack of full scope of their interpersonal relationships at the time does not negate the potential impact these actions could have made, does it?

Is there anybody but Cam who would disagree with this? But what if some of the band members' objections were actually justified? Brian's a genius, but not infallible.


Here's my assumed scenario. It's an assumption, I could be dead wrong. The touring band felt estranged from their boss. The music he created had nothing to do with the other members anymore, they didn't identify with some of the music, which furthermore at the time was near impossible to do live. There wasn't much harmony anymore. Thus they tried to close the gap that had developed between Brian and the rest of the group in the two and a half years they had been working seperately, by working as one unit again. So it was - unfortunately - decided to junk the whole batch of one year's recordings and start from scratch. Why it was decided to record at Brian's home rather than in proper studios is another thing. And to display that it wasn't one king and a couple of pawns anymore, the new record bore the credit "produced by the Beach Boys", even though Brian still pulled the strings.

Speaking as someone whose first language isn't English and who has no real connection to the words "scrap" and "parse", I think that in that LA Times article Carl's definition of "to scrap" isn't the same as Taylor's. While Taylor makes a distinction between "to scrap" and "to destroy" (the recordings are scrapped, but not destroyed), Carl when he says the recordings aren't "scrapped" means to say "they're not destroyed". So I don't see a real contradiction between the two articles. Or maybe I just don't get anymore what this controversy is about.

You don't have to be senile to misremember something after 50 years. Or maybe I am senile because in my less than 50 years of life I have found to have been misremembering numerous times.

The weird thing to me is why, after the publication of the article in the UK and they continuing to tour there, why some journalist wouldn't have asked them about the scrapped pronouncement.  Were the journalists also unaware of this brief paragraph in the article about the tour?  And if they were unaware, it's not a stretch to think the Boys never saw it either.

And if the journalists did see it, did they judge it as earth-shattering as we do?

While we indeed aren't privy to the internal stuff... do you honestly think it's logical to state that bandmate microagressions absolutely, unequivocally didn’t happen WHATSOEVER, and/or if they did happen, they had ZERO effect on Brian’s state of mind?

Very few people do think so, I guess. In the Williams dialogue it was stated there was negative things from all directions, including from the boys.

But, as it seems on most internet discussions, asking to treat others respectfully is asking too much.

Good advice to follow. Try it.

I'm pretty sure I am. Did you perceive my criticism of your mindset as condescending?

The original CD version certainly has the *ambience* of a soundcheck performance, and I suppose if Al was having the touring band cut a *new* song during a soundcheck, he was presumably effectively cutting a demo. It sounds to me like what it apparently actually is: a live soundcheck to which some amount of overdubs were added.

So that's why it sounds so good! IMHO the "other" version isn't punchier either.

Note whose name they didn't mention as the source.

Like--- everybody in the world?
 

I assume having no idea who told Taylor excludes Brian as Taylor's source as well.

You have made up your mind what has happened and twist your perception of any info to suit what you believe. All that Mike's and Bruce's answers show is that they don't really give a hoot about this issue.

We are the society for putting things on top of other things.

I think the "demo" version is far superior - nicer arrangement, better singing, and without the superfluous Rhonda organ intro. Doesn't sound to me like a demo at all.

Here, There and Everywhere is to me more boring than all of Pet Sounds and the rest of Revolver. 1966 was THE year though. Pet Sounds, Revolver, After-Math, A Quick One ... never topped, if you happen to have the same musical taste as me. The best works of the respective artists.

I don't know anything about dogs, but if the Beach Boys were Smurfs, their names would be Crazy, Baldy, Pudgy, Shorty, and Hefty.

2 - who died and made you Queen of the Board ?

3 - you're using Badman as a credible source. Think again.

I think you could just as well tell her that in a less condescending and arrogant tone. If you don't know how to, see Ian's posting. But, as it seems on most internet discussions, asking to treat others respectfully is asking too much.

Dennis was interviewed the day of the Dublin show while waiting for Carl to fly in from the US to play that first show of the tour in Dublin. He defends the art of it, explains why they didn't release Heroes: "Oh, we got a little frightened. We've got a lot of songs recorded, but we got nervous about whether they were good enough. We've got afraid to put anything out unless it comes up to a certain standard. We're not just putting out singles to sell thousands and earn money."

Bruce was interviewed at a later show on the same leg of the show by the same Keith Altham who wrote the piece published April 29 saying Smile was being readied. After expressing his anger over releasing Then I Kissed Her as a single, he says: "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"

Mike in that same article, same interview, after also commenting on the EMI single decision says: "The reason for the hold up with the new single has simply been that we wanted to give our public the best and the best isn't ready yet."

Carl's interviews from roughly the same time suggest Brian was working in the studio.

So add all of that up, the "word" from the band members ranges from Bruce suggesting Smile would be coming out, Dennis saying it will come out when it's ready, and Mike saying something similar.

This same week those interviews were given, Taylor writes that the album was scrapped.

This is IMHO a stronger indication that no member of the touring band was the source for Taylor's announcement than Mike 50 years later denying it was him. Very obviously they did either not know about the article or collectively chose to ignore the article unless asked about it. Given the lack of coordination in the whole SMiLE project I tend rather to the former than the latter.

The question is why were they (the Beach Boys) either blissfully unaware or ignoring the matter entirely when talking to Altbach after the Poll Winners show?

Lack of coordination.

Jan/Feb - Mainly work on H&V for single release, employing sectional/modular recording style which worked so well for GV.

If I'm not mistaken, the only part of GV that was recorded as a section instead of a new version of the whole song was the organ bridge.

Why would Capitol pay any attention to a unilateral Mike pronouncement (or any of the Boys save the Producer)? Why would Taylor? Brian was the Producer. Why would Brian not just have Taylor make a correction announcement (as was done with Vegetables) if it wasn't something he wanted or agreed with or was just premature or incorrect? Why would Taylor be a toll free phone call away from Brian, who he knows is the Producer, ask about this information? I find Dom's claim extremely suspicious as of now with no evidence.

In this matter though, Cam, we agree. Yay!

So Mike says he didn't give the info to Taylor - you can either believe that or not. As I stated, human memory isn't written in stone and instead very liable to change over time, and of course, there is also the possibility he doesn't tell the truth.

Now that GF has decided to come down from Mount Olympus and granted us mortals knowledge of his source, the next one to ask for his source is Priore.

when Cam Mott in this discussion says Smile was already scrapped before the April sessions, and the timelines list them all up to June 1967 as a "Smile Session" on the timeline, why not put a challenge to Cam

Actually I did, a few pages ago, and I did so because he based his claim solely on Al Jardine's memory, and human memories always prove to be faulty. His claim is to me no more plausible than yours. At least we know Cam's source, the Al interview. I don't think a lot of people agree with Cam on this matter.

I gave several sources for my interpretation, Micha, ol' pal.  

I see that first person testimony, land and album and union and Capitol documents don't stack up to second hand opinion and fan ears and fan opinions and fan timelines and unattributed biographies and what-not but I keep pushing anyway.

I have to admit that you brought forward the master number issue additionally to Al's vague memories. But IMHO that's no valid evidence either. The Smiley master number of H&V is first used in January, when there is no talk whatsoever yet of that session being for a different album project, and both Wonderful and Wind Chimes had two different master numbers during the SMiLE era. (WC unless it's a typo in the TSS book.) So again, ol' pal, we disagree.

I'm sorry, but I don't get what the word "land" means in the context of your posting - "land documents"? I must be reading it incorrectly.

Was there any evidence that Wind Chimes was air?

I don't have any information outside of this thread, but while I don't think it's established in this thread that it was Mike Love, I think it's pretty unlikely that the sole source of such extreme contradiction twice and so close together was Brian Wilson. Maybe it was, but it just seems like it was more confusion than just in his head.

We may never know. There's obviously people who think they know, but I don't.

So give me a source, I'll look it up and think about it.

What didn't make sense from a few pages ago was the timing of the two UK weekly articles publishing columns basically within a week of each other where Brian tells the NME writer the new album - 12 tracks - is being readied for rush promotion. Then Taylor reports the album was scrapped.

Big disconnect, right?

Logically, what could have happened to cause such a contradiction between what Brian told NME and what Taylor wrote? And beyond that, if Taylor's info was accurate, what was Brian doing recording "DaDa" with the Wrecking Crew while the Beach Boys were playing in Germany, just over a week after Taylor's column declared the project dead?

Considering Brian's mental state as reported by Jules Siegel you have to expect illogical behavior from Brian at the time. Saying it's finished, two weeks later say it's scrapped, then start recording again. To me this looks like just like another try in the old "blame Mike for everything" game. Something at fault? MIKE LOVE!!!

In another recent Smile related discussion here, it was suggested that Jules Siegel's article was biased with hints of or even outright sexism because of his description of Carole Kaye at a session and other factors, therefore it shouldn't be considered as legitimate in terms of a source or historical record of the events he reported.

Well, that was not an opinion I agree with. But I see there's no use arguing with neither you or Cam. I don't believe your claim if you won't back it up, and I see you won't and rather display an air of superiority.

when Cam Mott in this discussion says Smile was already scrapped before the April sessions, and the timelines list them all up to June 1967 as a "Smile Session" on the timeline, why not put a challenge to Cam

Actually I did, a few pages ago, and I did so because he based his claim solely on Al Jardine's memory, and human memories always prove to be faulty. His claim is to me no more plausible than yours. At least we know Cam's source, the Al interview. I don't think a lot of people agree with Cam on this matter.

What didn't make sense from a few pages ago was the timing of the two UK weekly articles publishing columns basically within a week of each other where Brian tells the NME writer the new album - 12 tracks - is being readied for rush promotion. Then Taylor reports the album was scrapped.

Big disconnect, right?

Logically, what could have happened to cause such a contradiction between what Brian told NME and what Taylor wrote? And beyond that, if Taylor's info was accurate, what was Brian doing recording "DaDa" with the Wrecking Crew while the Beach Boys were playing in Germany, just over a week after Taylor's column declared the project dead?

Considering Brian's mental state as reported by Jules Siegel you have to expect illogical behavior from Brian at the time. Saying it's finished, two weeks later say it's scrapped, then start recording again. To me this looks like just like another try in the old "blame Mike for everything" game. Something at fault? MIKE LOVE!!!

Can anyone disprove that Mike was the one working closest to Derek Taylor at this specific time

Where's the proof it wasn't Brian who Taylor worked closest with? I think it's more likely Taylor got the info from Brian, as they were in the same city, Taylor saying Brian "sealed it in a can".

What are you trying to prove anyway? That SMiLE was junked because Mike told Talor it was scrapped, while in fact Brian was still working on it?

It's pretty arrogant of you to say WE should "dig deeper" for something you might as well have made up.

Where was it said Taylor was in England?

I read this as such:

Then Mike tells Derek Taylor in the UK something different, and it's now "scrapped".

The way you worded it sounds like implying they were both there. I still don't get why you insist Mike told Taylor the album was scrapped. How can you be sure of that?

Oh, AGD beat me to it. Still posting it because AGD couldn't provide the quote.

And (courtesy of "Jeff" - from Badman) - session "ILTSDD" - on 5/16-18.  (I Love to say Da Da) - sounds like Mike.

I don't get this. What sounds like Mike?

Word is...Taylor's info didn't come from Brian.

Whose word?

Micha, I'm keeping them feet well above the high-tide line.  We live in an elevated position which makes things easier.

No intentions to move to lower Geelong?

Any of those rather than something with the remains of Modern Talking...