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.

Absolutely and Carl compared it to "a bunt instead of a grand slam" so clearly Carl saw Smile as something different to Smiley Smile.

And to get back to what this was originally about - when exactly in this list does the music become "reproduceable" by the touring band, where it wasn't before?

That wasn't what this was originally about - it was originally about Smile being ready in 1967 - according to you it was.

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.

Twaddle.  Post hoc ergo propter hoc?  I read reports of what they said at the time.  At the time they said they stopped recording Smile and started from scratch.  They also repeatedly said afterward that Smile may eventually be released.

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.

None of the recordings made for Smile were used on Smiley Smile so that marks a clear delineation where Smile stopped and Smiley Smile started.  Love to Say Dada was not used on Smiley Smile and MAY have been the last thing recorded for Smile.  Cool Cool Water was not Love to Say Dada.  It was the first thing Brian wrote in his new house and was only merged with the chant from Love to Say Dada in January 1970 for Sunflower.


The scrapping of Smile and the plan for Smiley Smile (then unnamed) must have been discussed when the group returned from the tour and what Brian may have been referring to when Bruce suggested using the album they had in the can - he made a remark about a big argument.   

So we don't know the exact date but somewhere between 19th May and 6th June negations took place and an agreement reached.

Crucially the Beach Boys were given credit as producers even though Brian produced it.  That means a pay off - they got money for producing the album even though they didn't and as Steve Desper said Beach Boys politics is follow the money.  They didn't want Smile.  Brian took it off them and paid them for it with the credit and by using some of the material but mostly changed, and delivering the album really quickly which was vital because they were behind with contractual obligations and Capitol were not paying enough royalties.

Lots of this is false info, so I think some things should be clarified again -

First of all, the "Love to Say Da Da chant" was recorded under the title Cool, Cool Water, in Brian's home studio. It either comes from the main Smiley Smile period, or possibly later during Wild Honey.

Second, LTSDD and CCW are the same song musically, which was first written in December 1966. The chord progression is identical, though the lyrical subject matter has changed. But there's no significant difference between that change and say, the significant restructure Wind Chimes went through from August-October 1966, or the massive changes Child is Father of the Man went through, or the big change in tone Wonderful went through from December to January... not to mention Heroes & Villains being completely rewritten and re-recorded just about every week in January-March 1967. So why does the distinct project "Smile" have to be abandoned some time between these two recordings, both of which were recorded in L.A. studios outside of Brian's house, and neither of which appeared on the list of Smile songs from 1966 OR Smiley Smile? Where on EARTH did that bizarre theory come from, and why is it being repeated so often?

It should also be noted that the Heroes verse was recorded October 20, 1966, the chorus was recorded in February 1967, and the last few sections of Vegetables were recorded in April 1967. So, if there must be a distinct switch from one album to another, based on what material appears on Smiley, I guess Smile had to be scrapped before October 20? Or if we're counting Good Vibrations, before February 17, 1966, during the Pet Sounds era? Or perhaps, Smile/Smiley Smile was a flowing project that went through dozens of changes over time, and didn't become productive again until Brian started re-recording things in his house.

Christian Matijas-Mecca. The Words and Music of Brian Wilson p96

““Cool Cool Water” was back under Brian’s hands in January 1970 as a vocal chant that emerged from the May 1967 track “I Love to Say Dada.” When Brian returned to this for Sunflower, he combined the chant from “Da Da” with the core of his original version of “Cool, Cool Water” to create an entirely new work.  On the 1993 Good Vibrations boxed set we had the first official release of “I Love to Say Dada” and the original fragment of “…Water,” and I can hear the relationship of these two works.  The song, as it appears on Sunflower, is a lighthearted, finger-snapping vocal callisthenic.  Its inclusion on the album was the work of Warners A&R manager, Lenny Waronker, who referred to this as representative of the ‘kind’ of work he liked to hear from Brian.

Timothy White Sunflower/Surf’s Up CD 2000 liner notes - Brian:  “I’m proud of "Cool, Cool Water" because that was a divinely inspired song. I had just moved into a new house on Bellagio Road in Bel Air, in March of 1967, and the first day I moved in, there was a piano there, and I went to the piano and wrote "Cool, Cool Water". I sat and wrote the gist of it, the basic song. It was finished much later of course.”

H&V was given to the radio station to be played on 11th July but Brian had held onto it for about a month so it was ready at the beginning of June.  It was a very long awaited single.  They had nothing else ready to release as a single so there was no choice but to release it despite it being part of Smile but perhaps Brian also hoped that it would be a success and give him support to release Smile after Smiley Smile as it seems was the plan at one time.

Vegetables differs from Vega-tables. Vegetables has different lyrics and was completely re-recorded for Smiley Smile.

Good Vibrations was released on 10th October 1966 at a time Smile was being made. Brian did not want Good Vibrations to be included on Smiley Smile.

The recent assertion that Smile wasn’t ever shelved and Smiley Smile just grew out of it seems to be a revisionist history to remove any element of blame from the band for not supporting Smile but it doesn’t do that anyway - if the project had changed that wouldn’t be surprising considering that Brian wasn’t working in a vacuum and was effected by the pressures being put upon him so any blame remains firmly in place. 

Some of the basic music was used in Smiley Smile but this is not surprising either and not the first time that a composer has re-used phrases of music: something Brian went on to do again and again.  He had a very short period to produce an album due to financial pressures so he used some pieces but he refused to allow them to use the music originally recorded for Smile so THIS is the shelving of Smile.  I don’t believe it was ever scrapped as such - even though Brian seems to have instructed Derek Taylor to issue a press release to say that it was - its not just a belief either since it was eventually released both in it’s composite parts and also reworked into BWPS - but that was just another progression wasn’t it!  If Smiley Smile is simply the final version of Smile it morphed in style, content, format and complexity and all that remained were some of the basic musical phrases so much so that if you play one after the other it is obvious that you have not  listened to the same album twice.  Further all the rest of the band continued to assert that Smile was still a possibility.  So if I’m wrong so was the group and the rock history written by many others.

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.

None of the recordings made for Smile were used on Smiley Smile so that marks a clear delineation where Smile stopped and Smiley Smile started.  Love to Say Dada was not used on Smiley Smile and MAY have been the last thing recorded for Smile.  Cool Cool Water was not Love to Say Dada.  It was the first thing Brian wrote in his new house and was only merged with the chant from Love to Say Dada in January 1970 for Sunflower.


The scrapping of Smile and the plan for Smiley Smile (then unnamed) must have been discussed when the group returned from the tour and what Brian may have been referring to when Bruce suggested using the album they had in the can - he made a remark about a big argument.   

So we don't know the exact date but somewhere between 19th May and 6th June negations took place and an agreement reached.

Crucially the Beach Boys were given credit as producers even though Brian produced it.  That means a pay off - they got money for producing the album even though they didn't and as Steve Desper said Beach Boys politics is follow the money.  They didn't want Smile.  Brian took it off them and paid them for it with the credit and by using some of the material but mostly changed, and delivering the album really quickly which was vital because they were behind with contractual obligations and Capitol were not paying enough royalties.

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.

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?

It seemed that Brian told Derek Taylor to issue the press release about the 'scrapping' without telling the rest of the band.  They gave subsequent interviews saying that they were still working on it (Dennis) and the one Guitar Fool quoted by Carl.  My interpretation is that it was a tactic.  They didn't like the material so he takes it away from them but preserves it for himself.  We know from David Anderle that Brian 'junked' a lot of the vocals recorded by the band after disagreements and recorded ALL of the vocals himself.  Where are those recordings?  They say that the bootlegs came from the vinyls cut for the band to take home.  If Brian didn't give them the recordings he'd made of his own voice then the vinyls wouldn't include them.

Cool Cool Water and I Can't Wait Too Long wasn't used on Smiley and I read somewhere that Brian was unhappy with them using Cool Cool Water on Sunflower and Surf's Up on Surf's Up.  Was I Can't Wait Too Long intended for Smile?  But like Cool Cool Water the original version of Vega-tables, and ALL the recordings made for Smile they all remained unused and unreleased.  Isn't that what you'd do if you still had hopes that one day you could release them?  He even went on working on I Can't Wait Too Long.

I agree that all the stuff the band came out with about Smile was just hype - for a time!  Eventually they began to see that the hype can sell records and then that the Smile music sells records.

I had read that only the Barnyard section of Cabin Essence was missing in December 66 and that 7 of the tracks were complete then.  So if vocal tracks were missing likely Brian 'junked' them. I'm sure that many of the boot legs included the later versions of Cabinessence and Surf's Up etc but they may have simply replaced them.

Good point rab, the actual sessions where BW is in control disproved the Mike Love approved “American family” TV movie where BW is singing to a doll at one point and making weird party sessions.

And I was reading just yesterday of the time he painted his face green to meet the Reprise people described in Carlin's book. From the Arkhonia Wordpress site "Carlin makes a subtle argument throughout Catch A Wave that Brian Wilson made conscious efforts, through the post-Smile years, to sabotage any future career for The Beach Boys – or at the very least to estrange himself from the band; that he could contribute to this meeting for ‘an hour or two’ with his stupid green face while still ‘astute and polite’ suggests a subtle kind of ‘madness’ – a very conscious and self-aware one. This anecdote suggests a tactic at work."

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.

I Love to Say Da Da is the first of the 2 water chants which form a vital part of Smile.  He may have been working on it to use on the reverse of a single and it changed into Cool Cool Water which he also didn't use on Smiley Smile.  I read somewhere that Brian was unhappy that they had put this on Sunflower.  Vegetables was a change from the original also which had VDP lyrics and was called Vega-tables.   It is quite obvious he was trying to protect as much of the original Smile as possible from use.

I'm enjoying reading this thread, but I want to chime in here on this point even though I rarely post: I Love to Say Da Da was not supposed to be water in the context of Smile, although that is what the track eventually grew into during the period of time being discussed here (i.e., during the time when Smile was transitioning/being reworked into Smiley Smile). According to Stephen Desper, the song was originally about a baby and more likely than not was initially envisioned as part of the 'cycle of life' songs that Wonderful, Child is Father of the Man, and Surf's Up all belonged to. The "wa-wa" 'chant' that you're referring to were baby sounds, and theme of the song being about a baby is referenced in its title and the fact that Brian reportedly sucked on a baby bottle filled with chocolate milk when he was composing it. It was only after Smile that the song's theme changed into being about water. You can read Stephen's comments about how I Love to Say Da Da morphed into Cool, Cool Water here: http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,11964.msg238603.html#msg238603 and here: http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,11964.msg238790.html#msg238790

Given how late in the Smile Session's chronology Brian worked on it, and given how Van Dyke never even wrote lyrics for it, what with the song itself being an outgrowth of a scrapped section of Heroes and Villains (All Day), I am not convinced that Da Da would have appeared on any hypothetical released version of Smile back in early 1967. I definitely wouldn't say that the song was a 'vital part of Smile', and, given its origins, it is also highly improbable that Brian ever had it in mind as part of any elements suite given how the song was originally about a baby. On the thread I just linked to, someone suggested that the transition from the song about a baby to being about water likely happened during this transition period into Smiley Smile after Smile (as it had originally been conceived) had officially been scrapped. I think that view has merit to it — Brian working on the song during this period may have just been him experimenting and fleshing out the song, and that experimentation led to Cool, Cool Water instead. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about Da Da being water and what its overall place/role in Smile was, which I think in large part stems from the fact that the above posts from Stephen were the first time I think that information about the history of the track had been revealed. So I think Bicyclerider's comment about DaDa ultimately being the start of something new for Brian is on point, even though that 'newness' was him experimenting and building upon an older song.

I apologise.  I misled myself.

I have a partial article. I have been trying to find the rest of it or source it elsewhere but the author’s name is lost and in the morass of information on Smile it is difficult to plough through it all. I believed this article was published before BWPS and it quite clearly explains the lyrics of The Elements to illustrate Brian’s now famed LSD trip in which he died and was reborn. 

It includes quotations from VDP and the lyrics to Da Da are a chant issued as he is reborn in Hawaii.  This obviously makes it an important part of the story and as I also have a track list published long before BWPS which includes “I love to Say Da Da I (Water)” in the same position on the album, I had thought that VDP had written these lyrics earlier.  This, combined with the knowledge that Smiley Smile didn’t begin production until June  and that Brian had refused to use any of the Smile material on Smiley and that he re-recorded Da Da as Cool Cool Water, made it seem obvious to me that Da Da was part of The Elements on Smile. 

I still THINK I’m right but obviously the VDP lyrics for it were written at the time of BWPS. 

The lyrics for Da Da converted from the Hawaiian “convey the idea of a prolonged, intensified ritual based on sacred breathing, with a possible music connection”.  As this is a rebirth I expect the baby like sounds are somewhat fortuitous at worst and possibly deliberate as this is Van Dyke’s style. It is possible that this was always intended - someone else pointed out that VDP leaving was seen to be a big deal at the time which it would only have been if his work was not complete.  Perhaps Da Da was some of the work he hadn’t completed.

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.

I Love to Say Da Da is the first of the 2 water chants which form a vital part of Smile.  He may have been working on it to use on the reverse of a single and it changed into Cool Cool Water which he also didn't use on Smiley Smile.  I read somewhere that Brian was unhappy that they had put this on Sunflower.  Vegetables was a change from the original also which had VDP lyrics and was called Vega-tables.   It is quite obvious he was trying to protect as much of the original Smile as possible from use.

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", even if at the time, there was a thought that he would eventually return to the material after clearing the air.

"Not destroyed, but scrapped. For what Wilson seals in a can and destroys is scrapped."  Doesn't sound much like he thought he'd be going back to it any time.

True. For all the Engemann memo was circulating with that discussion about using the sleeves and booklets, I don't think Brian ever expressed a serious interest in returning to Smile. Others would occasionally bring it up under the assumption that they'd eventually go back to it (including Bruce in early '68 who said they had half an album in the can) but Brian made an intriguing comment that year about a big group argument over his decision to not use those songs.

The group were involved in litigation with Capitol over royalties so they may not have been sympathetic to Brian attempting to release this under his own name.  The group had had another big group argument in which all of the others in the band thought the music was not right for them (to put it diplomatically).  Brian would need to get around their disapproval.  Was Brian contractually tied to the group or did they just brow beat him to stay as they reportedly did with the Redwood incident which happened in the same year?  Was that incident enough to persuade Brian that any attempt for him to go solo with Smile was impossible? David Anderle was suggesting to Brian at the time that The Beach Boys shouldn't be involved in Smile.  Brian reportedly junked a lot of their vocals and recorded them in his own voice after the arguments - was he just unhappy with their performance or was he producing it for himself.

I expect his response to Bruce was a bit of passive aggressiveness on Brian's part and I can well understand it.  At the time Brian was making the album it wasn't right and suddenly they want to use it.   Brian seems to have wanted to preserve Smile  and not to allow them to use it and seemingly they argued about that too.  It could just be to punish them or just that he didn't want it watered down as with Vegetables or it could be that he wanted the opportunity to do what he wanted with it himself.

[Presumably Capitol and the band overruled Brian about putting GV on SMILEY SMILE.]

--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.

Good point, GF. I tend to think that Capitol was again hedging its bets with the band at this point with a Best of vol 2, given that they'd gone so long without a new LP. (Which seems pretty wacky to us today, but they really wanted--and expected--three LPs a year in those days).

"Gettin' Hungry" was only kinda sorta a Beach Boys single; its release was rather perfunctory and was put out as "Brian and Mike." A certain amount of fence-mending and ego-stroking might have been at work there. And Capitol probably figured that it was worth it to do so in order to mark time for an impending LP release that they may have already suspected was going to have some amount of backlash associated with it.

My point was that the turnaround mechanism at Capitol at that time would pretty easily accommodate a month from mastering to in-the-stores. So the decision to do a Best of vol 2 must have been made in May or June, when things were still up in the air regarding exactly what was coming from the band in terms of a new LP. As it turned out, Best of vol 2 was a misfire, only getting up to the 50s on the sales charts.

But here's a question I don't think we've ever discussed previously. Presumably Capitol and the band overruled Brian about putting GV on SMILEY SMILE. If Brian had prevailed, however, you'd have a big hole on Side Two; without GV, the other five tracks amount to about 11 minutes of music. Seems that they would've needed to come up with something else to put on the record--but what would it have been? "Good Time Mama"?!

BTW, thanks to Will for grabbing the Taylor piece--I hadn't seen it in years and its tone confirms some things I remember sensing in it when I first encountered it. It's as paradoxical as anything else that surfaced in the "nether region" period--frankly, it reads like Taylor had downed half a bottle of single malt before he sat down at the typewriter. It confirms the idea that Taylor was channeling the strangeness that was abounding around the project and the band--and, of course, Brian--and was making his own odd call for help as he found himself slipping down the rabbit hole with his clients.

It's almost as if Derek is a go-between for Brian and the band, letting them know that he's open to some parallel prospect for the future--SMiLE "scrapped" as a Beach Boy project, with something else TBD in its place.

And the best guess that I think is available to us is that by doing so, he still hoped to keep most of SMiLE intact as his own project, while moving on to some rapprochement with the band. That explains Engemann's memo.

Only what happened was that the band, faced with Brian's depression in the "fall breaking back to winter" in 68-69, decided that they had no choice but to take away his sovereignty over the SMiLE material. Turning it into a "myth" and an ongoing mystery, a bauble they could use as needed.

The band overruled Brian's decision to put GV on Smiley Smile - it was the first time they ever did that.

Certainly by not allowing any of the Smile recordings to go on Smiley Smile Brian was certainly keeping Smile in the hope of putting it out and probably wanted to include GV.  Perhaps Brian told Derek Taylor about scrapping the album as part of that plan - preserve Smile unchanged for a later release and give the band something else which would get them off his back about their concerns about it.  No wonder he got very depressed later when they started raiding his jewellery box to support themselves when they didn't have the nerve to support him in the first place.

[There's nothing evidentially tying the May Love to Say Da Da sessions to Smile.]

There's nothing evidentially tying the May Love to Say Da Da sessions to Smile. If anything, Brian doing that strongly supports that the album he was supposed to deliver had been put on the shelf - these are a run of sessions for new music not among the 12 song titles printed on the back sleeves for the first time since fall '66, besides You're Welcome and the embryonic December Da Da (neither of which were done on the books with a master number assignment). Yes, it's not really a production departure yet - but so? Taylor's piece had been published, obviously at Brian's behest, and here's Brian working on new material outside of the album he'd promised to deliver. In any case, something wasn't clicking with him, as he cancelled a session and never used the track.

When the Beach Boys returned from Europe they started working on more new material (You're With Me Tonight and Cool Cool Water, both of which were potentially B-sides for Vegetables), but they're at Western, there's a harpsichord, there's a session bassist, and the production approach isn't practically any different to most of those sessions throughout the Smile era for Wonderful, He Gives Speeches, Surf's Up, You're Welcome, all the Heroes and Vegetables sections, parts of Do You Like Worms, Wind Chimes, etc. The only thing that sets Da Da apart is it was the last ensemble Wrecking Crew track recorded at Gold Star, but those were already few and far between as '66 moved into '67. Then Brian finally gets the home studio that he’s been asking after and has a wind of inspiration to return to Heroes and Villains as the single following a rewrite, so they spend a few days finishing that off at the house and it’s… basically the same thing? He’s in a new place and has a new organ, sure, but the actual arrangement and production style doesn’t differ in any meaningful way to what he’d been doing with Heroes at Columbia months earlier. On the heels of that, the environment and available instrumentation inspires a new arrangement of Vegetables – and in my mind that’s when a new sound clicks and Smiley Smile is conceptually born. Brian had been sliding towards that type of organic-feeling minimalism for a long time. The transition up to then is natural and traceable and obvious. It’s just a kick up to the next level, really – he jumped into a new bag and got excited by it, to put it in Brian lingo.

I think to say that there’s any one single creative leap from Smile to Smiley Smile and that it can be pegged to Love to Say Da Da is an extremely reductive way to look at it all. But on a practical level, as in, “the next Beach Boys album won’t be Smile,” it’s the Taylor article.

For posterity, here’s that whole thing, Disk & Music Echo, 6th May 1967:

BEACH BOYS fly in for a hot tour - and this is why there’s no new single to launch it...

BEACH BOYS WEEK IN BRITAIN! Out of a sleek, silver jet at London Airport come Igor Horoshevsky, Frank St Peters, Jim Carther and Richard Thompson - plus the five better-known Beach Boys…
    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.
It will be fine music this tour. It wasn’t all bad last November, either, when the Beach Boys’ potential new LP “Dumb Angel” was about to become “Smile” far away in the Beverly Hills at Brian Wilson’s piano set grandly in the sandbox in the drawing room.
    So why, people may be asking, has the genius Wilson not offered us a new single since “Good Vibrations?” Where, too, is the album? It’s a long story…
    Last November, as the Beach Boys toured Britain, Wilson had NEARLY completed “Heroes And Villains,” scheduled as their follow-up single.
    The rest of the “Smile” LP songs lay in dry dock, in varying states of completion. And when Carl, Dennis, Al, Mike and Bruce - full of pubs, laden with Portobello Road, wreathed in holiday smiles and British pop-battle honours - inhaled again the sun-sealed smog of their home-Golden State, the final construction work began.
BUT ALAS…
    Brian Wilson began to stare at the glittering ships of tape and as the day of the launch became nearer than a date on the never-never calendar, he gazed at his plans and he turned his mind’s ear inwards and the longer he stared and the more he heard, the clearer it became that he was now in his jet age, building steamships.
    Which couldn’t be right.
    In truth, every beautifully designed, finely-wrought inspirationally-welded piece of music made these last months by Brian and his Beach Boy craftsmen has been SCRAPPED.
    Not destroyed, but scrapped. For what Wilson seals in a can and destroys is scrapped.
    As an average fan of the Beach Boys, I think it is bitterly disappointing. But it isn’t as if one is bereft of the group’s essential spirit - there are 14 albums, many of them incredibly pure and full of life and lovely.
    One is, however, deprived of renewal. It is like waiting for an heir when the pregnancy is total. It has to come. Has to.
    What, then? I don’t know. The Beach Boys don’t know. Brian Wilson, God grant him peace of mind … he doesn’t know.
    He is waiting with his nearest Mike and Al and Bruce and his dearest Carl and Dennis. And if it is difficult for them, it is absolutely unbearable for Brian.
    It has to come. New single, new album.
    Until it does, I trust we can all be patient and enjoy the substance of the Beach Boy family which is still young and new, and continually justifying its place in an exclusive pop hierarchy which has never admitted charlatans or pretenders.
    “THE BEACH BOYS AND IGOR” are flying.
    Switch off the lights, turn on “Pet Sounds,” and you know that there are in the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson some eclectic, elegant, ethereal elements which transcend the transitory Top 30, and which makes nonsense of “now music.”
    The Beach Boys are with you now.
    For now they are yours.
    Enjoy them.
    That is why they came.

I Love to Say Da Da is one of the 2 water element pieces of the The Elements and so IS tied to Smile and is on the list.  It was changed to Cool Cool Water.

As I understand it by the end of 1966 they only had left to do vocals for the Home on the Range section on Cabin Essence, vocals for Do You Like Worms, vocals for Surf's Up and the 2nd movement, Vega-tables and I Love To Say Da Da.  So there was not a lot to actually do so why at the 11th hour would you give the whole thing up?  He was struggling with reworking H&V in 1967 but managed to finish that so that couldn't have been the trigger to 'scrap' the whole album.  Even if he felt like that for 10 minutes and told Derek Taylor when he overcame the problems with H&V and the opportunity to release the album was still open, why didn't he?

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", even if at the time, there was a thought that he would eventually return to the material after clearing the air.

"Not destroyed, but scrapped. For what Wilson seals in a can and destroys is scrapped."  Doesn't sound much like he thought he'd be going back to it any time.

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

I'm going to drop this quote here, from a post in 2016 in a discussion about the same issues we're discussing here, and I hope everyone reading it forms their own opinions on what Carl said. For the record, the article itself is 100% legitimate, and since this 2016 discussion I have gotten a clipping of the full article from the LA Times as it was published in that Sunday edition, October 8 1967. The quotes are accurate and in context.

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)

Thanks so much for finding this.  I really appreciate it.  Your wealth of knowledge is amazing.

From the fan point of view, it’s easy to come to a number of conclusions (or I guess just opinions) about “Smile.”

It’s interesting if we start getting into whether not putting it out was a bad idea. On many levels, on many fronts, the answer is of course an easy yes. It’s amazing music. Even those that don’t like the modular music approach can’t deny the pieces are stunning.

But if we’re looking at how “Smile” would have been received in 1967, that’s a whole other beast. I don’t think anybody can say with any certainty how it would have performed with critics or on the charts. But I think it’s not outrageous to say that it’s unlikely it would have surpassed something like Sgt. Pepper on the charts or with the broad critical consensus. It would have likely been received by the enlightened both in and outside of the industry in a similar if not grander fashion than “Pet Sounds” had been.

Would it have led to more hits for the band in the immediate? I don’t know. I think it’s fair to say quite possibly not. It quickly becomes a case of stacking a lot of “What Ifs” on top of each other. But one scenario is that things, at least in the immediate aftermath of a release of “Smile”, would have played out similarly to how it actually did, in terms of musical releases and chart performance/sales. “Smile” may have been less noticed and met with more confusion than “Pet Sounds.” We obviously would not have then seen a “Smiley Smile”, but something akin to “Wild Honey” could have easily materialized I think.

I don’t think if “Smile” had been released that we would have then seen the setlist there on out filled with a bunch of “Smile” selections. They would not have been playing “Wind Chimes” and “Look” at Anaheim Stadium in 1976.

“Smile” has been discussed so heavily, I’m sure someone else has already floated the theory that things would have still played out much the same had it been released. I’m not even endorsing that theory; it’s a few too many what if’s I think. But it’s interesting to ponder the idea of a universe where the BB story played out pretty much the same in the studio and on the road, only we had a finished “Smile” instead of “Smiley Smile”, and I guess “20/20” and “Surf’s Up” would have been somewhat different?

I don't think it's possible to know what would have happened if Smile had been released.  The Beach Boys existing fan base would probably not have taken to it - although some would - the UK fans especially.  But they may have attracted other new followers with more esoteric interests and with less of a high value on hits.  If there had been any kind of success in this way then perhaps Brian would have been able to do what he wanted which was to progress musically.  The band should really have split instead of just making each other unhappy and things may have turned out better for Brian personally. 
Perhaps Brian would have been prepared to throw them a hit single now and again had they separated and in any case Carl and Dennis were beginning to write their own music and so could have supported the band.  Another alternative that they could continue with the touring band and release records of their own individually under their own name.  The current touring band cannot make music under the name of The Beach Boys but have been making a comfortable living out of it for years.
On the other hand a complete flop may have been curtains and the plus side of withholding of Smile was it allowed its legend to carry on growing until in the end it was the fans who caused it to be released.

As you say there are too many what if's.

As ever, it is useful to keep in mind that the Beach Boys is not just a band, or group, that makes music.  Before that, they are a family. It so happens that this family makes music and then found commercial success with that music, but they are a family first and foremost.

For the Beach Boys, Smiley Smile is preferable to whatever Smile could or would have been because Smiley is, in their collective mindset, a collective endeavor by the whole band ("Produced by the Beach Boys") with all members engaged in the creation of the album.  The album is recorded in sequestered  family space, Brian Wilson's home, away from the outsiders and various external "bad influences" that are perceived to the cause of Brian's problems.  In this way, Smiley Smile is indeed Smile - but only the Beach Boys' version of Smile, not that of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks.

During the time period in question, they primary operating goal of the collective Beach Boys is not musical, let alone artistic.  As of mid-1967, the main purpose of the Beach Boys is to stay together as a family/band. Their career is, arguably, in jeopardy during the Smile-era, and once Smile collapses, it becomes more apparent that something must be done, and done quickly, to right the ship, or to revert the Beach Boys back to its prior equilibrium state - that of a unified family organization, rather than an artistic dictatorship whereby all members of the family are at the mercy of the whims of one eccentric family member.

Stability is goal number one, because if they cannot do that, then everything else - chart ranking, singles, musical quality, etc. - is moot.  Because of Brian's actions circa 1966-67, the family foundation of the Beach Boys had been in jeopardy.  If that hadn't been the case - for example, if, hypothetically, Brian had hired Tony Asher to help him write happy, up-tempo songs about boy-girl relationships - there wouldn't have been as much of a problem.  If the family foundation is strong and secure (i.e., nobody in the band is going to leave, or go solo, or do anything that threatens the existence of the band) then yes, it is possible to move on and try to make good music. This was the state of things in, say, 1963, and into the first half of 1964. In those days the Beach Boys, as a whole, single entity, is in good shape (especially if they can put some distance between themselves and Murry, which they did)  Brian Wilson, however, as an individual, is progressively in worse and worse shape, as signified by the nervous breakdown at the end of 1964.

Anybody can fill in the rest... it's basically a tug-of-war between Brian and what he represents (both positive and negative) and the Beach Boys business family and what it represents (both positive and negative). Anyway, this dynamic is a significant (though not the only) reason Smiley Smile sounds the way it does in comparison to the Smile Sessions music. Smiley was a function of business necessity (survival) , not just unfettered artistic license on the part of the band members, as if they could easily choose what they wanted Smiley to sound like.

Smiley is a a reflection of the Beach Boys as of mid-1967: talented, but hopelessly dysfunctional.  I appreciate Smiley too, but to really celebrate the album, you need to push the dysfunction and family problems out of your mind and pretend that the Beach Boys are happily unified and are intending to make a cool, weird, left-field album.

No, The Beach Boys are a band that makes music.  Brian has other cousins who are not in the band.  Al and Bruce are no relation at all.  If the group disbanded those who are family would still be family.

If your primary aim is to keep the group (family and non-family) together then it still is way off target since it started the decline in Brian’s creative involvement in the group and his decline in health and into drug taking and remaining in his room which eventually ended with them expelling him from the group.  

But that isn’t the primary aim of a group.  It is to make music and the best music that they can.  As they very soon started trading off Smile - not The Beach Boys version but the version by Brian and VDP - by promising its release and then putting pieces of it on various albums it’s obvious that they realised its worth eventually.  Brian puts a version of it out to great acclaim and then in 2011 The Smile Sessions are released which presumably was approved by the remaining band.

Smiley Smile was labelled ‘produced by the Beach Boys’ yet they over ruled Brian’s wishes not to include GV.  It is made in Brian Wilson’s home not the Beach Boys family home!

Mike Love was not happy with Tony Asher’s lyrical contribution either.  There was a problem during Pet Sounds.

What it basically amounted to was that Brian had musical acumen which the other band members lacked but they didn’t trust him.  Them forcing Brian to abandon 3 Dog Night who he had signed to Brother and then blaming Brian for not keeping them when they went on to be extremely successful is another case in point of them not trusting Brian’s skill and then blaming him for them not doing so. So basically instead of keeping the band together, they shot themselves in the foot.

According to David Anderle Brian did intend to make a good humour album and THAT is Smiley Smile.

This is a vast, vast oversimplification of the rest of the band's attitude towards Brian (and their attitude towards the "Smile" music), especially if we're lumping *all* of the other members together.

There's no successful reductionist approach to trying to explain the demise of "Smile", and certainly no reductionist approach to trying to explain the demise of Brian, both within the group and outside of the group.

And if we're getting into "expelling Brian from the group", which I have to assume means the late 1982 "firing", then that's a *whole* other ball of a wax full of tons of moving parts.

Of course it’s a simplification though I think it was Van Dyke Parks who said something like ‘all of them disliked it, even the lesser known members of the group’.  VDP may feel a little bitterly toward everyone considering what happened and it may be tainting his recollection but you’d think that it would have to be more than 3 who disliked it enough to want it scrapped especially considering the difficulties that decision would cause them.

I’m not actually trying to explain the ‘demise’ of Smile - the reverse. I’m trying to explain how it may have survived and how it was actually ready and that it was only the decision of the band - or the majority of the band - which prevented its release.

As for ‘explaining the demise’ of Brian.  He is not yet dead, not actually nor musically.  He has written and performed music and produced many albums both within and outside the group.

Of course I’m referring to the firing and we all know it was done to try and give Brian the motivation to quit drugs though I’m not sure that saying he couldn’t ever rejoin the group even if he stopped taking drugs would be a motivation to stop, probably a reason to take more.

I think it's pretty well-established that VDP is an important source of information, and that he also has his own spin on things as far as recollections and impressions, and so on. I don't know how much he understood *all* of the elements of the dynamics within the band. Like, how often did he have a long conversation with Al Jardine about how Al felt about the quality of the music, separate from the commercial/business outlook?

I think when anybody, whether it's VDP or fans/scholars, try to say that "all" of the rest of the band felt one way about the "Smile" material at any given point, that's not telling the full story. Yes, I think generalizing and maybe a bit of hyperbole from someone, including VDP, to drive home the point that the band's lack of hearty support for the material played a role in the album's demise, is fine. But when we're delving deep into the story, the reality is that the various members had simultaneous conflicting feelings about the stuff, and how they acted in response also shifted over time. Dennis and Carl could be very supportive of Brian, and also had times where they stood by and let Brian be torn down a bit (e.g. the Redwood tracks). I think Mike is the only member of the group that, at certain points, had actual skepticism about the *music* itself, in terms of just saying "that is really good, interesting material", again totally separate from misgivings about the commercial nature of the material. And even Mike has been able over the years to acknowledge the quality of the some of the material, including Brian's vocal on "Wonderful."

I'm not here to vociferously defend the other band members. But it's a very hazy, complex situation in terms of how they felt and how they acted. It's easy decades later to just look at the material and say "how could anybody stand in the way?." There are many, many reasons. The power dynamic on multiple levels was shifting. The amount of clout people had shifted. It starts to get murky trying to parse the difference between "not championing" something versus actively standing in the way.

And obviously,  by "demise of Brian", I was referring to his several downward tracks, in the mid-70s and then again in the early 80s. And that 1982 "firing", while obviously tied as *everything* in the band's history is to their previous history, was a pretty different animal from what was going on during the "bedroom" years of the mid-70s-ish. Brian was in some ways in a much darker and dangerous place in 1982, and the status of the touring operation was more of a factor in decisions they made about Brian, both positive and negative. By 1982, they weren't really a studio band anymore. They were a touring act that occasionally did studio work.

They were all at the Surfs Up recording session with VDP and David Anderle.  Anderle said there was ‘no ringleader’ that they all expressed concerns so VDP’s remark is substantiated and likely related to the discussion that took place then in December 1966.

I was not telling the full story simply because it is off the topic we are discussing and was only answering the points made by someone else. I am not trying to apportion blame and as I’ve just said Anderle said there was no ringleader and that they all had concerns.

I know what you meant by ‘demise’ I was just pointing out that ‘rumours of [his] death have been exaggerated’.

I've bought every solo album and have seen Brian in concert a dozen-plus times since 1999; I've picked apart the most inane of minutia about his most obscure 80s and 90s material and so on; I've never tried to minimize his continuing his career.

As far as VDP and "Surf's Up" and whatnot, yes, that is an important snapshot. And it may even be representative enough of the general consensus opinion of the rest of the group at a given moment. I'm just saying, the other guys are human beings and were professional musicians and singers with their own feelings and opinions, and I'm not sure how much VDP was having like heart-to-hearts with them about their musical philosophy. And that may not even be VDP's fault. I think we have a pretty decent insight into how the band had misgivings and concerns. Probably both justified and in some cases maybe not so much. But I'm probably honing in a lot here (and it's perhaps becoming more of a sidebar) on how they *felt* about the music. As in, did they think it was good? I think they all knew things like "Wonderful" and "Surf's Up" were amazing pieces. Even Mike. They had and have more of a keen insight into what's *good* than we sometimes might think (listen to Mike's running commentary on that Brian 1976 piano demo reel). The story in some cases is less about what they thought about the music, and more about how factors *outside* of their musical instincts led them away from their musical instincts. Like ego and money related to songwriting credits. What they thought the label wanted. What they thought fans wanted. Not only how they might *perform* music on stage, but how the audience would *respond* to that music in concert. And so on.

orry I didn’t mean to upset you I’m just being a little facetious.  TBH I’ve always liked your posts and admired your breadth of knowledge.  Whilst I’ve been a fan since 1968 and have all of their albums and Brian's albums and seen the Beach Boys play in all flavours and Brian so many times I’ve lost count, but don’t have the memory or the interest in the minutia to remember it. 

As I said I’m not trying to apportion blame but I do get a bit fed up with the ‘they’re all a big happy family” description especially when in the same post they then describe them as dysfunctional.   But however you look at it whoever thought Smile was a bad idea was wrong.  Music was changing and the not all the fans wanted sex on a surf board. Smile has been a selling point for several albums since and is still hugely popular and influential.  I remember during a concert in London in the 70s we were asked what we wanted to hear them play “Surf’s Up” was the deafening response - they played “Surfin USA”!

It's clear that most of the original SMiLE tracks were not worked on for months--held in limbo by the centripetal actions that ensued when there was some form of blowback against the project as a whole. What comes next is two months of grappling with H&V in an attempt to get the right follow-up to GV.

The central point of a thesis that "SMiLE was ready in 1967" hinges on the idea that all of the vocals were recorded for the backing tracks. We know that this is not true, and that efforts went off in related but tangential directions in the first three months of '67.

Clearly H&V in some form would also have appeared on the SMiLE LP, but the waters are very muddy about what that would have been, and it became moot when the band started over for SMILEY SMILE and (mostly) re-recorded H&V (along with "Woody","Wind Chimes," "Wonderful" and "Whistle In").

The fact that they'd not been worked on for awhile was part of the lingering crisis about what to do, one that didn't get resolved until (as GF suggests) the band returned from its April-May tour with their own agenda items for SMiLE and the band's future. The album was in limbo, but the Engemann memo suggests that Brian was trying to keep SMiLE in play as a separate entity, at least for awhile. Did he give up and abandon all that when he was confronted by Mike etal over Redwood?

SMiLE was almost ready in '67, for sure. But the impediments that cropped up in terms of taking it over the finish line just got larger and more onerous. The more Brian worked on workarounds, the farther the finish line seemed to be. Carl's description omits the pain involved in it, but otherwise has the ring of truth.

My point was that much of the work was complete prior to the scrapping, that the same reference was used for Smiley Smile as was used for Smile so it may have been possible for any unfinished work to have been done in Brian’s studio quoting that reference.  Indeed Carl’s statement which Guitar Fool posted said that  Smile was completed.

It may have been the Redwood incident but apparently there was also a problem with Capitol and perhaps that’s when the Brother logo was removed.

I don’t think it’s crazy to suggest that performing “Smiley Smile” material/arrangements would be easier for the band than “Smile” material/arrangements. It’s important to keep in mind that any live concert scenario would involve performing only a few songs from whatever version had been released.

“Smiley Smile” material (and “Wild Honey” material for that matter) could require less *stripping down* of the arrangements to play well enough on stage. They were going to be doing a few tracks, so in the extreme example, “Getting’ Hungry” would be far, far less demanding on the 1967 tour lineup than performing “Surf’s Up” or the full “Smile” version of “Wind Chimes” or something. Either version of “Vegetables” would have been among the easier tracks to arrange for their live show.

Now, how much this played a role in what happened with “Smile”, I don’t know. I don’t weigh this aspect particularly heavily.

I think all of this becomes much more germane of course when we get to “Wild Honey”, and you can see with those late ’67 shows that they seemed more into trying to do stripped-back versions of “Wild Honey” songs; they required less stripping back than like “Child is Father of the Man” or “Look” or “Surf’s Up”, etc.

They're working with one of the finest composers and arrangers of the time - couldn't they just ask Brian to arrange a version of these tracks which could be played on stage?  Brian played Surf's Up with a piano and a voice...

As ever, it is useful to keep in mind that the Beach Boys is not just a band, or group, that makes music.  Before that, they are a family. It so happens that this family makes music and then found commercial success with that music, but they are a family first and foremost.

For the Beach Boys, Smiley Smile is preferable to whatever Smile could or would have been because Smiley is, in their collective mindset, a collective endeavor by the whole band ("Produced by the Beach Boys") with all members engaged in the creation of the album.  The album is recorded in sequestered  family space, Brian Wilson's home, away from the outsiders and various external "bad influences" that are perceived to the cause of Brian's problems.  In this way, Smiley Smile is indeed Smile - but only the Beach Boys' version of Smile, not that of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks.

During the time period in question, they primary operating goal of the collective Beach Boys is not musical, let alone artistic.  As of mid-1967, the main purpose of the Beach Boys is to stay together as a family/band. Their career is, arguably, in jeopardy during the Smile-era, and once Smile collapses, it becomes more apparent that something must be done, and done quickly, to right the ship, or to revert the Beach Boys back to its prior equilibrium state - that of a unified family organization, rather than an artistic dictatorship whereby all members of the family are at the mercy of the whims of one eccentric family member.

Stability is goal number one, because if they cannot do that, then everything else - chart ranking, singles, musical quality, etc. - is moot.  Because of Brian's actions circa 1966-67, the family foundation of the Beach Boys had been in jeopardy.  If that hadn't been the case - for example, if, hypothetically, Brian had hired Tony Asher to help him write happy, up-tempo songs about boy-girl relationships - there wouldn't have been as much of a problem.  If the family foundation is strong and secure (i.e., nobody in the band is going to leave, or go solo, or do anything that threatens the existence of the band) then yes, it is possible to move on and try to make good music. This was the state of things in, say, 1963, and into the first half of 1964. In those days the Beach Boys, as a whole, single entity, is in good shape (especially if they can put some distance between themselves and Murry, which they did)  Brian Wilson, however, as an individual, is progressively in worse and worse shape, as signified by the nervous breakdown at the end of 1964.

Anybody can fill in the rest... it's basically a tug-of-war between Brian and what he represents (both positive and negative) and the Beach Boys business family and what it represents (both positive and negative). Anyway, this dynamic is a significant (though not the only) reason Smiley Smile sounds the way it does in comparison to the Smile Sessions music. Smiley was a function of business necessity (survival) , not just unfettered artistic license on the part of the band members, as if they could easily choose what they wanted Smiley to sound like.

Smiley is a a reflection of the Beach Boys as of mid-1967: talented, but hopelessly dysfunctional.  I appreciate Smiley too, but to really celebrate the album, you need to push the dysfunction and family problems out of your mind and pretend that the Beach Boys are happily unified and are intending to make a cool, weird, left-field album.

No, The Beach Boys are a band that makes music.  Brian has other cousins who are not in the band.  Al and Bruce are no relation at all.  If the group disbanded those who are family would still be family.

If your primary aim is to keep the group (family and non-family) together then it still is way off target since it started the decline in Brian’s creative involvement in the group and his decline in health and into drug taking and remaining in his room which eventually ended with them expelling him from the group.  

But that isn’t the primary aim of a group.  It is to make music and the best music that they can.  As they very soon started trading off Smile - not The Beach Boys version but the version by Brian and VDP - by promising its release and then putting pieces of it on various albums it’s obvious that they realised its worth eventually.  Brian puts a version of it out to great acclaim and then in 2011 The Smile Sessions are released which presumably was approved by the remaining band.

Smiley Smile was labelled ‘produced by the Beach Boys’ yet they over ruled Brian’s wishes not to include GV.  It is made in Brian Wilson’s home not the Beach Boys family home!

Mike Love was not happy with Tony Asher’s lyrical contribution either.  There was a problem during Pet Sounds.

What it basically amounted to was that Brian had musical acumen which the other band members lacked but they didn’t trust him.  Them forcing Brian to abandon 3 Dog Night who he had signed to Brother and then blaming Brian for not keeping them when they went on to be extremely successful is another case in point of them not trusting Brian’s skill and then blaming him for them not doing so. So basically instead of keeping the band together, they shot themselves in the foot.

According to David Anderle Brian did intend to make a good humour album and THAT is Smiley Smile.

This is a vast, vast oversimplification of the rest of the band's attitude towards Brian (and their attitude towards the "Smile" music), especially if we're lumping *all* of the other members together.

There's no successful reductionist approach to trying to explain the demise of "Smile", and certainly no reductionist approach to trying to explain the demise of Brian, both within the group and outside of the group.

And if we're getting into "expelling Brian from the group", which I have to assume means the late 1982 "firing", then that's a *whole* other ball of a wax full of tons of moving parts.

Of course it’s a simplification though I think it was Van Dyke Parks who said something like ‘all of them disliked it, even the lesser known members of the group’.  VDP may feel a little bitterly toward everyone considering what happened and it may be tainting his recollection but you’d think that it would have to be more than 3 who disliked it enough to want it scrapped especially considering the difficulties that decision would cause them.

I’m not actually trying to explain the ‘demise’ of Smile - the reverse. I’m trying to explain how it may have survived and how it was actually ready and that it was only the decision of the band - or the majority of the band - which prevented its release.

As for ‘explaining the demise’ of Brian.  He is not yet dead, not actually nor musically.  He has written and performed music and produced many albums both within and outside the group.

Of course I’m referring to the firing and we all know it was done to try and give Brian the motivation to quit drugs though I’m not sure that saying he couldn’t ever rejoin the group even if he stopped taking drugs would be a motivation to stop, probably a reason to take more.

I think it's pretty well-established that VDP is an important source of information, and that he also has his own spin on things as far as recollections and impressions, and so on. I don't know how much he understood *all* of the elements of the dynamics within the band. Like, how often did he have a long conversation with Al Jardine about how Al felt about the quality of the music, separate from the commercial/business outlook?

I think when anybody, whether it's VDP or fans/scholars, try to say that "all" of the rest of the band felt one way about the "Smile" material at any given point, that's not telling the full story. Yes, I think generalizing and maybe a bit of hyperbole from someone, including VDP, to drive home the point that the band's lack of hearty support for the material played a role in the album's demise, is fine. But when we're delving deep into the story, the reality is that the various members had simultaneous conflicting feelings about the stuff, and how they acted in response also shifted over time. Dennis and Carl could be very supportive of Brian, and also had times where they stood by and let Brian be torn down a bit (e.g. the Redwood tracks). I think Mike is the only member of the group that, at certain points, had actual skepticism about the *music* itself, in terms of just saying "that is really good, interesting material", again totally separate from misgivings about the commercial nature of the material. And even Mike has been able over the years to acknowledge the quality of the some of the material, including Brian's vocal on "Wonderful."

I'm not here to vociferously defend the other band members. But it's a very hazy, complex situation in terms of how they felt and how they acted. It's easy decades later to just look at the material and say "how could anybody stand in the way?." There are many, many reasons. The power dynamic on multiple levels was shifting. The amount of clout people had shifted. It starts to get murky trying to parse the difference between "not championing" something versus actively standing in the way.

And obviously,  by "demise of Brian", I was referring to his several downward tracks, in the mid-70s and then again in the early 80s. And that 1982 "firing", while obviously tied as *everything* in the band's history is to their previous history, was a pretty different animal from what was going on during the "bedroom" years of the mid-70s-ish. Brian was in some ways in a much darker and dangerous place in 1982, and the status of the touring operation was more of a factor in decisions they made about Brian, both positive and negative. By 1982, they weren't really a studio band anymore. They were a touring act that occasionally did studio work.

They were all at the Surfs Up recording session with VDP and David Anderle.  Anderle said there was ‘no ringleader’ that they all expressed concerns so VDP’s remark is substantiated and likely related to the discussion that took place then in December 1966.

I was not telling the full story simply because it is off the topic we are discussing and was only answering the points made by someone else. I am not trying to apportion blame and as I’ve just said Anderle said there was no ringleader and that they all had concerns.

I know what you meant by ‘demise’ I was just pointing out that ‘rumours of [his] death have been exaggerated’.

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.

I know who he was but why would Brian have told him to do a press release saying the album was scrapped in early May when he had studio sessions booked for a week or 2 later?  The Beach Boys were in Germany during that time so the sessions were not booked for them.  Someone in this thread said that someone else ran the session.  I must try and check.  I can't imagine someone other than Brian directing the session.  Capitol cancelled the sessions the next day.   Brian and Capitol are still in discussions about the cover for Smile in July.  I don't think Derek Taylor went rogue.  I think someone told him to issue the release I just don't know who or why. 

You say "It hadn't been worked on for many months"  and "they never stopped working on an album" - which is it?  In May there wasn't another album and Da Da was for Smile and that was the scheduled session.  Plus they didn't start working on Smiley until Brian's home studio was operational on 11 June.

The sessions for Love to Say Da Da are run by Brian, as can be heard on the 2011 box, as they are Beach Boys sessions, and Brian Wilson was their producer. Brian consulted with Derek Taylor about the press release because the Beach Boys would not be releasing an album called Smile as their next LP. There were sessions booked because the Beach Boys were recording artists under a contract that needed to deliver an album. Nothing about that is different from before the press release. It is specified in the press release itself that Smile is not being completely thrown away, and Smile discussions between the Beach Boys and record companies continued for many years. It seems like there's a big misunderstanding here, based on the way people want to classify Brian's recording sessions. There is nothing on the paperwork that suggests that something is a "Smile session" or "not a Smile session." They are all sessions for The Beach Boys and their new music, whether the album was called Smile or not. After May 6, it was not.

Someone else here said it wasn't Brian, not me.  As I said I don't believe that anyone else would run the session but I'm trying to be fair and consider it as a possibility.  So the album was scrapped 2 weeks before a studio session to record a track which is well known to be a track for Smile (it doesn't need to be written down on the studio paperwork for us to know that Da Da was intended for Smile and was not on Smiley Smile).  According to Badham (not always reliable) Capitol cancelled the final day scheduled for DaDa.  So it seems they didn't know about Smiley Smile on 19th May or else it would have gone ahead. In any case Brian insisted all the original Smile recordings should not be used for Smiley and re-recorded them at home.  So it seems that Brian didn't know the album was scrapped either.

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.

I know who he was but why would Brian have told him to do a press release saying the album was scrapped in early May when he had studio sessions booked for a week or 2 later?  The Beach Boys were in Germany during that time so the sessions were not booked for them.  Someone in this thread said that someone else ran the session.  I must try and check.  I can't imagine someone other than Brian directing the session.  Capitol cancelled the sessions the next day.   Brian and Capitol are still in discussions about the cover for Smile in July.  I don't think Derek Taylor went rogue.  I think someone told him to issue the release I just don't know who or why. 

You say "It hadn't been worked on for many months"  and "they never stopped working on an album" - which is it?  In May there wasn't another album and Da Da was for Smile and that was the scheduled session.  Plus they didn't start working on Smiley until Brian's home studio was operational on 11 June.

--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.

I think SMiLE is not any single thing. It's at the same time Smiley Smile (which I adore), BWPS, the 2011 Sessions, the fanmixes, and several other things. Navigating the immense complexity of SMiLE is the most exhilarating music voyage imaginable.
Also, it's uncanny how the Paley sessions created such a similar situation. The worst myth about Brian is that he was creatively toast in 1967, or even in 1966. What BS.

Absolutely!!!!

Wow, this thread is like a sudden explosion of energy and colour in this forum. Makes me feel younger. Thanks to Galaxy Liz (love that nickname, btw) for starting it, and to all participants.
Also particular thanks to Guitarfool, Angela and Rab for the links about Do You Like Worms.
I listened again, several times, to the session at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRocIqQSsK8&t=194s
where the "new melody" for Worms surfaced, and now to my (admittedly untrained) ears the melody Brian sings at 3'18'' is not truncated as I had thought before.
Actually, the melody is present in the session in 3 slightly different versions, both vocal and instrumental.

Version 1 is what the upright bass plays at 1'34'', twice. I hear it as:
TA TA TA TA | TA TA TA TA | TAAAA

Version 2 is what Brian sings, with no words, at 1'46', and the upright bass plays, twice, at 2'45'' and again, a bit less clearly, at 5'07''. I hear it as:
TA TA TA TA | TA TA TA TA | TA TA TAA

Version 3 is what Brings sings, with words, at 3'18''. I hear it like version 1, rhythmically, but sprightlier and with like a bouncing dynamic. I think it's awesome. By the way, does anybody understand what Brian exactly says at 3'18'' ?

However I think this melody can be sung with the known lyrics and works well when followed by the Plymouth Rock refrain, like this:
Brian melody in TA TA TA TA | TA TA TA TA | TAAAA rhythm.      (Oh, once upon the Sandwich iiiisles)
Brian melody in TA TA TA TA | TA TA TA TA | TA TA TAA rhythm. (the social structure steamed upon Hawaii)
"Rock, rock, roll, Plymouth Rock, roll over ..."

Glad I posted it too (I was worried it go down like a damp squib and no one would reply or I'd be shot down in flames) and thanks to everyone for the lively and interesting discussion - though my head is throbbing.  I'm trying to keep all the music threads in my head along with the dates of sessions, who said what and why.  But that's Smile for you!  Ang is playing this stuff over and over.  I can't hear Brian either.  She's good at working out this stuff - I'm rubbish. (The nickname has a silly origin but is also a nod to my sister's avatar of Dennis surfing in space and our associated email address.)