Sorry, another one: what I wrote above is most relevant pre-or-contemporary-to the release of Smiley Smile, perhaps less so as '67 got closer to '68. I still don't mean to make out that Carl was lying. I guess what I'm saying is, if he believed in April-June '67 that the original album was almost ready to release (minus H&V and GV), then he would presumably believe the same six months or a year later. Right up until '72, as AGD points out, when he actually listened to the extant tapes.

So was he lying in 1967, or was he simply not fully aware of the true facts ? Strong language, lying. To be used with extreme caution

Just to be clear: I never meant to imply that Carl was lying about 'Smile being finished'. In terms of Altham, I argued earlier that - on the basis of the tracklist - you could argue that most of the songs were basically finished, give or take an 'Elements' or a 'Surf's Up'. Several had leads, and several others were apparently just a couple hours lead vox sessions away from completion. Rough assemblies, rough mixing, backing vox - a lot of these were done. I've told a boss before that something was 'finished' and what that meant was it  would be finished by 5pm, or whenever the deadline was. No lie intended, in any practical or ethical sense. I believed at the time I said it, it would be. And it (almost) always was.

Let's remember that this was the first (and perhaps only) Beach Boys album to be conceived and composed by Brian so separately from the rest of the group. Even if he had hired Usher or Asher to write lyrics before, the group on tour was usually only a few days or weeks away from that process. In the case of Smile, they came back as 'conquering heroes' from the UK, and found the whole 'town had changed' (Vosse/Anderle). In Carlin, for instance, Van Dyke reports that the first time he met Mike was at the December confrontation over the lyrics to 'Cabin Essence', when Brian - without explanation - called him into the studio. And Smile had been being officially recorded since August, with band vocals recorded as early as September ('Prayer').

So when I say Carl might have been being diplomatic in the press, I mean only that. I think the overall takeaway from this thread is that there was genuine confusion in the band, the label, and their various press connections as to exactly what the score was. None of them seem to have really known (cf. the April-May quotes from Dennis, Bruce, Mike et al) where Brian's head was at during this period, if work on the album was ongoing, how close to being done it was, quite what the record was going to be - and maybe he didn't either. My position is simply that Brian's public statements (for what they're worth) and the surviving session records (for what they're worth) indicate he'd started removing himself from 'Smile proper' towards the end of '66/start of '67.

I have no doubt that anything Carl said to the press was: what he had been given to believe was true; what he hoped to be true; or what might have been true, or any combination of the above. Just phrased in a way which would do the band the least possible damage with the record label that had paid for those recordings, and which they had just successfully sued.  

EDIT: Having written all of this, I've just realised Emily summed it up far more succinctly just above:

So is it reasonable to conclude that Carl and Brian weren't on the same page on some of this?

Yes. That's what I was trying to suggest.

Guitarfool2002:

The same label the band in announcing the lawsuit said they wanted to break out of their contract with? Trying to save face with the label that they had recently publicly (and rightfully) exposed as having defrauded the band (and possibly other artists as well) out of money for several years and wanted to end their contract with wouldn't seem to be a priority.
 

The same label against which they were using the defrauded royalties as leverage to get a monetary pay-out and - most importantly - their own subsidiary label. This isn't conjecture on my part. It's a matter of public record. Grillo, Anderle, members of the band are all on record on this. Is your counter-argument that the Beach Boys didn't go to the press and say, 'Oh, we don't actually want to leave Capitol - we just want our own label. So we're pretending we might leave to force them to give us one'?

Emily:

I thought The Holy Bee's comments about 'damage control' referred to the May quotes by the touring band saying that everything's A-OK after the 'scrapped' comment. But perhaps not.

Yes, but later in 1967 - post Smiley Smile - too.

Guitarfool2002:

Carl Wilson, in Fall 1967 after the release of Smiley Smile says the following (in bold and italics in my re-quote):

- They did not "scrap" Smile, despite what Taylor's May 6th article said.

- They had parts which they just haven't used yet, suggesting some of the Smile material may still see the light of day in some form (backed up by various Capitol memos from the months prior as well)

- They had finished the album in some way and at some point, which backs up the Altham piece from late April where he wrote the "12 tracks are finished"

- They did not all agree on some things...anyone's guess what those were.

- They decided to do something new, and started from scratch, exact words according to Carl. *Not* continue "Smile", not have what they were doing with Smile transition seamlessly into Smiley Smile as some are suggesting, but rather start from scratch and start something new. There isn't much of a way to parse or twist Carl's own description to suggest Smile just morphed into Smiley Smile by June 1967 without a definite start and end point when he says they "started from scratch" and recorded this new album which was Smiley Smile.

Further, Carl again suggests the actual "Smile" material was not scrapped and might still be coming out, i.e. "we just haven't used them yet".

My previous post is as true - if not more so - in this later context. They're officially back/still with Capitol. They've got their pay-out. They have their own label. There's thousands of Capitol's dollars worth of '66-'67 recordings sitting in storage unreleased. There's thousands of dollars worth of pre-printed covers and booklets unused. Am I really parsing things too closely here? And - just as an observation - the only known source of one of the two 'we've finished the album' statements released in the press is Carl.

Guitarfool states that Brian and Capitol were in talks to release a 10-track Smile album to make use of this printed stock/recording after 'Smiley Smile'. I know there's a memo from Capitol to Brian on the subject. Is there any record of Brian's active involvement with this plan? A response to Engelman from him? Any public statement? I'm really asking - there might be something I don't know about. But if there isn't, then all we know is a Capitol Exec was keen to try and salvage some of the resources they'd spent on the project, and contacted the band leader with a proposal for how to do so.

Whereas, within six months of the release of Smiley Smile, we do know that Brian Wilson said this:

Early 1967, I had planned to make an album entitled SMILE. I was working with a guy named Van Dyke Parks, who was collaborating with me on some of the tunes, and in the process, we came up with a song called "Surf's Up," and I performed that with just a piano on a documentary show made on rock music. The song "Surf's Up" that I sang on that documentary never came out on an album, and it was supposed to come out on the SMILE album, and that and a couple of other songs were junked... because... I don't know why... for some reason didn't want to put them on the album. And the group nearly broke up, actually broke up for good after that.

And, later, said this:

Cam Mott:
“After I came down off the drugs and saw what I had done with Smile, I junked it.”  Brian Wilson

"I junked it. We junked them. I didn’t like where the music was coming from. I thought it was inappropriate for the Beach Boys and I junked it.”  Brian Wilson

“We never finished it, because a lot of that sh*t just bothered me - but half of it we didn’t finish anyway." Brian Wilson

"“We didn’t finish it because we had a lot of problems, inner group problems. We had time commitments we couldn’t keep, so we stopped."  Brian Wilson

The SMiLE album artwork was ready and publicized in March and the actual album covers were done in April, so we are thinking that Brian is deliberately still recording tracks for SMiLE of alternate title or title that will not appear on the album covers that are either being made or already made instead of those alternate tracks being for the alternate album Smiley Smile.  It said "See label for correct playing order" not "for correct titles and unlisted songs".

I hadn't realised the covers were completed/printed/delivered in April. So Capitol, at least, was still working on the basis that work on SMiLE was ongoing, it appears.

Now, if you were the 'level-headed' brother in a family band, and that band was/had been in recent legal conflict with their record label, and that record label had conceded on the crucial points and was about to give your band its own subsidiary label, and that record label had been paying for months of recording that your brother/band leader had now decided was to be junked: wouldn't you try and provide some diplomatic commentary - 'damage control' might be another term for it - on that topic to the press?

That's just supposition, of course. Even 'parsing', if you like. Maybe you wouldn't. I suspect I would.

Interesting to see how the debate has progressed. A few thoughts, for what they're worth, and out of order:

It seems to me the mistake being made is an assumption that the announcement was a surprise to any of the Boys.  An assumption from none of them reacting the way it is thought they should to this supposed surprise.  

The May announcement wasn't a surprise to any of them is a reason. They already knew is a reason, as in Brian's witness to KHJ of the Boys' (negative) reaction when he revealed he was junking Surf's Up and other SMiLE songs.

Here's the full quote, often employed in Ancient Times (c. 2002) to support the other side of the argument (ie. the band almost broke up because Brian wanted to put 'those songs' on an album, despite any close reading of the text):

"The song "Surf's Up" that I sang on that documentary never came out on an album, and it was supposed to come out on the SMILE album, and that and a couple of other songs were junked... because... I, don't know why... for some reason, didn't want to put them on the album.  And the group nearly broke up, actually broke up for good after that." [1968]

Back that up with the sessionography issues I've been harping on about a few pages back: Brian could theoretically have gotten the leads recorded for a number of album tracks in early '67 (DYLW, CE, CFTM), but he didn't. For almost a full month (March '67) no recording took place at all, despite the fact the Boys were in town and had recently been willing to go through two month's work of sessions on one individual track (H&V), for a single release that kept being postponed, and then (for three months) cancelled. This all implies - much as I believe the straightforward testimony of VDP that 'certain members' of the band were opposed to the work he and Brian were doing, and that this was instrumental in Brian not completing the record - that the final decision was Brian's, and that other members of the group weren't necessarily aware of this decision initially. And, indeed, were upset by the amount of money and time devoted to a record that would never see the shelves when the decision was made clear to them. The quotes given by both GF from April/May - 'our best isn't ready yet' - and Cam from June and later (ie. Mike not knowing that the album's title had changed; that he was 'just a singer' on the project) are actually in accord when viewed through this prism.

Let's stick to what we know: an article published in early May from the band's press officer states Smile is scrapped. Fact. And as far as anyone knows, none of the band ever commented on it, nor did any subsequent interviewer ask them about it. Maybe, as unlikely as it seems, they simply didn't read it. Possibly, someone did read it, thought "Brian's at it again" and promptly forgot about it. Fact, no-one knows, and at this late remove, probably never will. But if you're looking for who may have told Taylor - assuming anyone did and he didn't just pull it out of thin air, and remember, he's got previous in this - there are certain suspects with both the knowledge, the motive and the ability. Did Taylor say "Brian told me..." ? No. But it didn't say it wasn't Brian either.

Fact. Or, indeed, facts. Which isn't to say there aren't alternative interpretations of the data, but nothing quoted above is anything other than fact. The prerogative of the debater is to disprove it, using other data. But I probably don't need to point that out.

I agree. To me SMiLE started transitioning like in January and sometime between then and April 4 SMiLE stopped and Smiley began.  The first Smiley sessions sound more like the recent SMiLE recordings because that's still how and where he was recording at the time (studios & Wrecking Crew). The later Smiley tracks sound the way they do because that's how and where they were recording at that time (improvised home studio and just themselves).  

I agree that January seems like the practical point of transition. Conceptually I'd say mid-to-late December was more likely the moment of abandonment for the original conception, but that might just be me. I'd argue, further, that a large part of the reason general opinion holds the April sessions as still part of 'Smile' proper is because for so long we've had a more musically realised 'Vegetables', etc, that hail from those dates, as opposed to the poor orphaned 'demo' that all data from '66 suggests was at one point considered the definitive article. The TSS box certainly endorses those later 'single release' sessions as being for an authentic 'Smile' version of the song. On what historical basis, outside of convenience, I think remains unclear, if not deliberately so.

But to go back to the OP (OMP):

- Water (in 1966, at least) was water sounds that the Vosse Posse recorded on their Nagra reels

And to Matt B's response (which I, incidentally, agreed with):

[/Weeeeeeellll... we don't know that, either. With the other Elements, you've got something, however sketchy... But we don't know ANYTHING at all about Water.

I bought the kindle version of Carlin, recently, as a result of this thread. A great, thoroughly researched read, though some of the Smile stuff did strike me as a little assumptive (it's taken as a matter of course, for instance, that the 'Bicycle Rider' chorus was part of H&V when Van Dyke and Brian first worked on it, and only later was recycled into 'Worms'. All the period evidence suggests the opposite, unless I'm missing something important, which is quite possible.) But it does have this statement from Mike Vosse - not a period recollection, perhaps, but surely worth note in relation to the thread-starting discussion of the Elements:

'The next day he gave me a really nice Nagra tape recorder, a big reel-to-reel job that you could use to record in sync with a motion picture camera, and sent me out to go around town and record water sounds. He explained that part of the new album would be a suite of elements, and so he wanted as many variations of how water can sound as I could come up with. He said, 'Take your time, go to oceans, streams, whatever.' So I did, and it was exhilarating! I'd come by to see him every day, and he'd listen to my tapes and talk about them. I was just fascinated that he would hear things every once in a while and his ears would prick up and he'd go back and listen again. And I had no idea what he was listening for!"

That's a direct connection, made by a key participant, between 'The Elements' and the Fusion-recalled/'Bob Gordon's Real Trip' water recordings, if I'm not mistaken?

To finish up on this note, here's Anderle talking to Paul Williams in 1968:

'We were aware, he made us aware, of what fire was going to be, and what water was going to be; we had some idea of air.'

[the project]

Let's just say, if the way a group has been recording albums and singles since the end of 1965 suddenly changes direction from what was the established and successful template up to that time...and takes a 180 degree turn from recording at Western with Chuck Britz and at Gold Star with session players and full instrumentation then changes to recording in Brian's living room with rented gear and a radio broadcast mixing board capturing the band singing in empty swimming pools and bathrooms set to a Baldwin organ backing and not a full drum kit or horn section in sight....

...we're supposed to believe no one noticed a radical change had occurred? That *this* setup was the same Smile album project Bruce raved about to NME a month earlier?

Something changed, radically, as of June 1967. And, more than the move to a new house and Van Dyke leaving affected the project in March/April.

Right. 'The project'. I think what I'm saying (EDIT for fear of misrepresenting another poster) is that June marks the beginning of a new project (Smiley Smile), and that the previous project (Smile) effectively ended much earlier on in the year. Whatever Altham may have said in April about the record being almost ready to go can still be true (most of the album does appear to have been tracked and in the can) and at the same time wildly inaccurate, as it would turn out (the material was there, but Brian evidenced little interest or ability to add final vocals and put it together). No one's debating a major shift occurred once the Boys returned from tour in mid-67, and the commencement of the 'home studio' recording era. I'm arguing that the data suggests that work on Smile-as-originally-conceived was drawing to an end six months earlier, and the Jan-April sessions were essentially a transitory period, apparently concentrating on a single release. I may well be wrong here, and my views may change, that's just how it seems to me at this point in the thread.

The impact of the new house, the lawsuit, Carl's draft, etc, are all factors worth discussion. But we know what the 12 Smile tracks were going to be called, and in the whole first half of 1967, only three of them were substantively worked on, two being complete remakes, and all of them with an eye to 45 release. Surely there are some pretty solid inferences to be drawn from this?

EDIT: Oh, and a supporting bit of observation for that last paragraph. I think it's usually underemphasized that something crucial also first occurred in the 'Heroes' sessions of January - the cannibalisation of parts of other 'Smile' tracks and their incorporation into the projected singles. Ie. 'Bicycle Rider' being co-opted from Worms and used to produce a conventional chorus for 'Heroes'; the use of OMP's 'Part Two' as the fade for the 'Cantina' edit. The voice-and-keyboard 'Child' chorus recording in April, possibly intended (but not necessarily, though it's hard to see how it may have been intended to stand on its own) for Veggies or the new Wonderful, might be a later example. Mightn't this also suggest that Brian was beginning to consider the 'album tracks' recorded and assembled the previous year increasingly expendable?

Could the negotiations and wrangling between parties with the lawsuit have influenced some of the band's comments to the UK press in May 67, all that about not being rushed, wanting to deliver a worthy product to the fans, etc? Keep in mind, Brian said nearly the same thing to Derek Taylor months earlier, about not being rushed, about wanting to deliver the best product but deliver it when it was felt it was ready, etc.

Again, it's easy to pin certain things on many factors, but there are some key factors that can't be ignored. A major public lawsuit between the band and their label could put a damper on what we'd consider normal activity, recording or releasing material.

Absolutely true. There are so many 'extenuating circumstances', when discussing this period, it's hard to keep them all in mind at once!

Further, to re-quote Anderle about this period:

Then there was a hassle between Van and Brian and Van wasn't around. So that meant that Brian was now going to have to finish some of the lyrics himself. Well, how was he gonna put his lyrics in with the lyrics already started by Van Dyke? So he stopped recording for a while. Got completely away from music, saying, it's time to get into films. And we all knew what was happening. So he abandoned the studio. Then, there was the business, Brother Records. He got his head into the business aspects of Brother Records. So that kept him out of ... he had another excuse.

In short: one of the key witnesses explicitly states that around March Brian chose to begin to absent himself from the project. (Anderle appears to be referring to March, here, as 'Van wasn't around' - he had been around, if increasingly infrequently, right through to February. March is also the month in which, indeed, 'he stopped recording for a while.') Not one witness, nor other documentation, suggests that the Beach Boys' touring schedule was any kind of factor in the collapse of Smile, apart from their reaction to the backing tracks they heard in late '66 on their return from the UK.

This doesn't mean, of course, that Brian wasn't trying/planning to complete a version of the record in 1967, I just can't see how any of the data we've been discussing on this thread (apart from Altham's 'twelve tracks in the can', which I discussed at some length in a previous post) particularly emphatically supports that hypothesis. Especially not that a lack of access to the band was any kind of factor.

I'm probably beating a dead horse here, I realise. Apologies if I've misunderstood your point.

I'm not sure quite where we're missing each other, GF, and I also don't think I'm speculating too wildly. We agree on the facts, it's just the interpretation of them that differs.

To put it as concisely as I can: If Brian only needed lead vocals from members of the band recorded to complete several songs in mid-1967, the question for me is not so much why he didn't tape them in May - when, as you point out, he couldn't have - but why he didn't try to record them in the three and a half months prior to that tour. Even if one says that's because the sporadic dates in Jan-Feb focussed on 'Heroes', and in April on 'Veggies', there's all of March in which almost no recording seems to have taken place at all.

And that's even assuming he actually required the other Beach Boys for those vocals. Most backing vox seem to have been completed. Why couldn't Brian have taken the leads - as he, according to Anderle, quite forcefully did in one song at least which had been more-or-less 'promised to Mike' (probably 'Heroes and Villians') - if he wanted to get the tracks finished, and that's all that was missing? On the previous album, Pet Sounds, he had shown no qualms in wiping and re-recording many vocal tracks by the band to get the sound he wanted.

So, again, what this suggests to me is that Brian himself showed little interest in 1967 in completing any of the half dozen (at least) fully tracked and roughly assembled songs from the Capitol track list which had been ready to receive final vocal dubs since December, apart from largely revamped versions of H&V and VT. Or that, even if he did, some external pressures stopped him from doing so. But I really can't see how it can be argued that the absence of the Beach Boys from LA for six weeks in the middle of the year is any kind of positive evidence that Brian was still pursuing his original plans for a completed 'Smile' in May.

Doesn't Anderle say something specific like "right around February"?

Correct, though Anderle seems to be referring to the point at which the creative differences between VDP and BW became impossible to ignore, not specifically to Van Dyke's final departure. That could be just a subjective reading on my part, however:

DAVID: Their parting was kind of tragic, in the fact that there were two people who absolutely did not want to separate but they both knew that they had to separate, that they could not work together. 'Cause they were too strong, you know, in their own areas.
PAUL: When, February?
DAVID: Right around February, yeah. Van was getting—his lyric was too sophisticated, and in some areas Brian's music was not sophisticated enough, and so they started clashing on that. PAUL: They missed each other.

The last part, yes - Consider when it was the first time Van Dyke left, did work on Smile stop?

Consider this too: Weigh up all of the Smile tracks we know that were in the vault as of the day the Beach Boys left for their long stretch of touring in mid-April 1967.

Many of the instrumental tracks were complete. Someone give a percentage, was it more than half, 75%, or more than that even? I never did the percentages, but i know someone did to compare it to 2004.

What was missing? Vocals. If the group was on tour almost constantly from mid-April into May and for all of May on another continent, what exactly could Brian have been cutting in the studio? The guys who would be adding vocals to the tracks were gone for roughly 6 weeks...in that time, Brian did cut "Love To Say Dada", which has been suggested could have been one of the missing elements to complete that track. Agree or not on that...

But what more could Brian cut if he already had the instrumental tracks in the can waiting for vocals if the band was on tour for 6 weeks?

I added this to my last post as an edit, but will put it here too as it's relevant to what you've written above, GF:

EDIT: What seems to be the case, at least going from the sessionography, recording dates, etc, is that most of the formal songwriting (at least in terms of lyrics) for Smile occurred between May and December 1966, and Van Dyke's involvement in 1967 mainly related to the single version of H&V ('Cantina', etc). Since the only new lyrics we know of being put to tape in '67 are for H&V (and possibly Vega-Tables), and considering the build-up to VDP's final departure appears to have been fairly drawn-out, I'd further suggest that whether or not Anderle is referring to December, February or March, or conflating various exits in the interview, is fairly irrelevant. The data that survives firmly suggests that the great majority of Van Dyke's lyrical input occurred pre-December 1966. It's his leaving before the album was completed that matters, not the date on which he did. Vosse, Anderle and Parks himself all seem to agree on this point.

Re: suspension of work in May 1967. Sure, the boys were away and - as I also said above - I agree it seems that what was missing, largely, were lead vocals for several album tracks. But while I can see that concentrating on those weeks they were on tour leans toward the conclusion that Smile was still happening, just unable to proceed until the voices got back, if you widen the scope out a bit to include Jan, Feb, March and (nominally) June, a very different analysis presents itself. No work took place during that time on nine of the 'more than half, 75%'-finished twelve songs listed on the LP cover, several of which were apparently complete sans lead vocals. Two of those that were worked on are explicitly stated in press clippings as attempts at a single, and the other (the 'Wonderful' remake) apparently for the B-side of the latter.

Which suggests to me that work on Smile as a long player, as it had been originally planned, was effectively suspended by Brian in early 1967. If it was as close to completion as both of us seem to feel it might have been, and mainly what was missing were vocals, then why weren't the 'Cabin Essence' verses, for instance, laid down in January? Or February? Or March? Or April? Concentrating on the weeks the boys were away and not able to record the final leads for a number of those songs, as opposed to the several preceding months where they were and could have done so, seems to be rather missing the wood for the trees.

I'm just quoting Anderle. What he says in the quote I posted, as with Taylor's June '67 comments, support the hypothesis that access to studio time was a factor in the dissolution of the Smile project. And we know that one of the key considerations as regard Brian and Marilyn's new house was the hasty installation of a home recording studio. A 'benchmark' factor? I don't know. Just pointing out that a key witness seems to have viewed it as a contributing aspect - along with the departure of Van Dyke Parks as lyricist.

My reading of Anderle's statement would be that he's referring to the final departure of VDP in March, not to his December or February exits. But it's not made explicit by the text, no.

EDIT: What seems to be the case, at least going from the sessionography, recording dates, etc, is that most of the formal songwriting (at least in terms of lyrics) for Smile occurred between May and December 1966, and Van Dyke's involvement in 1967 mainly related to the single version of H&V ('Cantina', etc). Since the only new lyrics we know of being put to tape in '67 are for H&V (and possibly Vega-Tables), and considering the build-up to VDP's final departure appears to have been fairly drawn-out, I'd further suggest that whether or Anderle is referring to December, February or March, or conflating various exits in the interview, is fairly irrelevant. The data that survives firmly suggests that the great majority of Van Dyke's lyrical input occurred pre-December 1966. It's his leaving before the album was completed that matters, not the date on which he did. Vosse, Anderle and Parks himself all seem to agree on this point.

[That, and the fact that for the first time Brian was having trouble with studios—getting studio time. Then he was having a problem with engineers.]

Re: Studio time, the March break in recording, and the March-April exodus of the 'Smile Faithful' (from Crawdaddy!, mid-'68):

David Anderle: 'That [the 'Fire' tape paranoia] was the first sign that we were going to have problems on this album. That, and the fact that for the first time Brian was having trouble with studios—getting studio time. Then he was having a problem with engineers. Brian was starting to meet a fantastic amount of resistance on all fronts. Like, very slowly everything started to collapse about him. The scene with Van Dyke. Now, that's a critical point. You've gotta remember that originally Van Dyke was gonna do all the lyrics for Smile. Then there was a hassle between Van and Brian and Van wasn't around. So that meant that Brian was now going to have to finish some of the lyrics himself. Well, how was he gonna put his lyrics in with the lyrics already started by Van Dyke? So he stopped recording for a while. Got completely away from music, saying, it's time to get into films. And we all knew what was happening. So he abandoned the studio. Then, there was the business, Brother Records. He got his head into the business aspects of Brother Records. So that kept him out of ... he had another excuse. [...] There was gonna be the Post article by Jules Siegel, he was on television, an incredible amount of excuses not to cut, things to get into. The little film for "Good Vibrations," which took time away, the guys being out of town, whatever, he was clinging onto excuses. And I was very aware of what was happening, but I couldn't put my finger onto why Smile was now starting to nose dive, other than the fact that I still felt at that point that the central thing was Van Dyke's severing of that relationship.

Paul Williams: The creative period had been passed and the specific concept was beginning to slip away.

Anderle: Right.'

And was also backed up by Anderle and Vosse in regards to SMiLE and Taylor in his April/May post-SMiLE articles and on into July.

Agreed.

I think we are over estimating how much the Boys knew about the nuts and bolts of what Brian intended and was doing in his Producing. For instance, in a Bravo interview (I think) from July after the release of H&V, Mike was not even aware that the title of the album had been changed to Smiley Smile on/or before July 20.

Which rather ties in to what I suggest in my post above.

This is great stuff. Thank you all.

Further stray thoughts on the chronology:

Dec - Mainly vocal tracking. List of titles sent to Capitol for covers. First major discord with VDP after he is ambushed by Brian into the 'over and over' incident with Mike (Carlin). Pressure mounts for a follow-up single, especially after the unexpected success of GV.
Jan/Feb - Mainly work on H&V for single release, employing sectional/modular recording style which worked so well for GV.
Mar - Recording stops almost completely for the month. Anderle recalls this period as Brian, finding it increasingly difficult to bring H&V at least to completion to his satisfaction, choosing to distract himself with various other side-projects.
April - Mainly work on new version of Vegetables for replacement single. End of month one report says 12 tracks are basically ready; a week later Taylor writes the album is scrapped.

Putting aside the issue of sources, these two statements are not necessarily contradictory. It seems (going from the '66 sessions) that backing tracks for most if not all of the 12 songs on the cover (except, probably, 'Surf's Up' and 'The Elements') might have been complete. Leads still required for 'Worms', 'Child' and 'Cabin Essence', and probably whatever 'Great Shape' was going to be, but elaborate backing vox present and correct on most songs. Something happens around this time, and someone tells Taylor the album's dead in the water.

Is it not possible that the Smile record planned in 1966 may have been almost complete, but not the Smile album Brian was sporadically working on (if, indeed, he was) in early '67? (EDIT: Isn't general satisfaction with the majority of the album tracks also suggested by the fact that work in Jan, Feb and April concentrates almost exclusively on the two songs announced as potential single releases, and one Badman names as an intended B-side? It would seem to be either that or, as Cam posits, possibly that Brian had effectively abandoned the original Smile project over the New Year, and was mainly working to get a 45 out.)

Van Dyke, Vosse and Anderle - collaborators and confidants in a way the band weren't - had all departed by April, and many sources speak of Brian's difficulty in articulating to others the plans inside his head. So one person could say 'almost ready to go' and another 'the album is scrapped', and they might both be telling the truth as they saw it. They'd just be talking about two - or multiple - quite different but intertwined conceptions of the album.

As a analogy, look at the torturous recording process for Guns'n'Roses' 'Chinese Democracy'. This was announced as being almost ready for release several times, and most of them that was probably true - except, as time showed, it wasn't. Different versions of the album may have been almost complete at different times, but not the album that eventually came out. So, like Schrödinger's cat, the record, locked up unseen and unheard inside the studio, was both alive and dead simultaneously.

Intrigued by Guitarfool's suggestion that Brian may have changed his mind in May, attempted briefly to complete 'The Elements' (maybe)/the album with the 'Dada' sessions, and then changed it back - for the last time - in June.

The point is Brian recorded 90 HOURS of material for "Good Vibrations" and from those sessions, assembled a three and a half minute single, discarding far more from the sessions than he kept. He recorded Smile in the same, modular fashion, with the same "standard length" end game in mind. The volume of Smile recordings in no way points to the record being a double album because he never planned to use everything he recorded

Well, here's the thing. It may well be an entrenched position on my part (which I wrote about at length on a different thread several years ago), but I'm not convinced that the individual tracks for Smile - in '66, at least - were being approached in a similar style to GV. Modular recording (ie. one completed backing track for a verse, copied as many times as the song required, then dubbed with vocals), sure. But the evidence of the surviving edits, assemblies and recording logs suggest a far more concrete and considered approach to song structure.

One example: Cabin Essence, whatever the compositional origins of the three discrete musical sections, was entirely tracked in one day. I believe on the Durrie Parks acetates there is an alternate sequencing, but we also have a rough assembly done by Brian at that time which has the sections ordered in the same sequence as would eventually be heard on 20/20. Wind Chimes had a full assembly. 'Child' has a vintage edit. 'Wonderful'. 'Fire'. 'Cornucopia' Veggies. 'Worms'. Surf's Up has the solo recording, giving the structure (repeated, with added coda vocals, in 1972). There's an increasing likelihood even H&V (inc. IIGS and Barnyard) had a full sequence planned in October/November, at least.

The GV extended recording period, and 'mix'n'match' approach to sequencing the various sections, doesn't actually seem to have provided much of a precedent for Smile, at least according to the tape evidence we have. Go through the Dec '66 tracklisting, and the great majority of those listed were actually given pre-vocal edits/assemblies by Brian, which remained fairly consistent where there are multiple edits to compare. GV was a Frankenstein, going through at least two distinct lyrical iterations, the first provided by a (very talented) writer-for-hire and the second by a member of the band, at least one key part of which - according to that person - was actually conceived 'on the fly' in a car on the way to the studio. GV seems to have been as much a musical/textural/structural experiment as a formally-organised 'pop song' as they were typically composed in the sixties (or, indeed, now).

The SMiLE songs, or the great majority of them at least, appear to have been written by BW and VDP in a way GV simply wasn't. Sure, 'the verse of one might [have] become the bridge of another', but by the time Brian got them into studio, the data suggests he knew what went with where, and in what order. When I did my '66 Smile' mix (36 minutes all up), I was surprised to see just how little tracking material from that year proved extraneous - the 'Child' bridge, 'Da Da' recording, the first 'Wind Chimes', 'Heroes and Villians Intro - Early Version', 'Look' and 'Holidays', if I recall correctly. (Oh, and 'Speeches', but I actually used that as a bridge in 'Wonderful' - because it may have been recorded the same day, and I'm naughty.) Not including the re-recorded WC, and the abandoned bridge for 'Child' (not used in Brian's '66 assembly), less than 10 minutes all up.

Which brings me, really, to my fundamental belief about what happened to Smile, regardless of the potential causes for it (the band's possible disapproval; the legal wrangling with Capitol; Murray; drugs; growing tension between Brian and Van Dyke; Vietnam, I suppose): There was a more-or-less 'fully conceived' [Vosse] and roughly sequenced album, with fully structured and largely tracked songs, in the works in late '66, and this was derailed in December of that year. I think history and the recorded evidence suggests this more than it does the alternative.

The pressure for a single release that might meet or exceed the unexpected and enormous success of GV, and perhaps also to make it appear to Capitol that the band were attempting to meet the label's expectations in some measure, appears to have led to the H&V mania of Jan and Feb (Anderle/Williams; Vosse; the sessiongraphy). Then, after essentially a month's recording break - to drift closer to topic - a similar concentration in April on 'Vegetables', explicitly mentioned in at least one press clipping as a replacement for the now 'dumped' (by Brian) 'Heroes and Villians' single release.

The work on other album tracks during early '67 is pretty cursory - a 'Child' chorus here, a new take on 'Wonderful' (for the B-side of 'Veggies', according to Badman above) there - so surely one can either read this as meaning a) Brian was satisfied he had most of the tracks in the can from the '66 sessions (going from the Altham clipping of April 29) or b) the album was functionally dead in the new year, even if no one was quite willing to admit that yet (eventually confirmed by Taylor, May 6), and the majority of work was on potential A-side/B-side releases for the much-needed new single. Or both.

But none of it, I suggest, leads to the conclusion that there was enough material for a double album - or even a particularly long one - actually conceived and (instrumentally) tracked for the Smile album intended to see a Christmas '66 release date ('The Elements', probably, and 'I'm in Great Shape', possibly, aside). This we agree on. I just think GV is a red herring either way when considering Brian and Van Dyke's 'operational principles' in writing and recording Smile, according to all the data we do have.

As Van Dyke put it in the 'Beautiful Dreamer' doco, when describing the primary productive period: 'It was a very athletic situation.'

I know that Keith Badman's book has been shown to be wrong in many cases, but this is the timeline according to him:

4/29: "From his desk in Los Angeles, Derek Taylor announces in Disc that 'Vegetables' will be the next single.  He writes: 'All the 12 songs for the new Beach Boys album are now completed and with every indication that the group's dispute with Capitol Records is over, there are plans to release the album on a rush schedule at any moment.  A rough draft of the cover depicts a nursery-like drawing of a smile shop, where people can go in and buy their smiles and grins to size.'  ...  A press release from Taylor dated today and appearing in both Record Mirror and New Musical Express reveals that 'Heroes and Villains' has been held up 'due to technical difficulties.  There is a new single in the wind.  ...  The title of the new Beach Boys single, 'Vegetables', is a light and lyrical, day to day, green grocery song on which Al Jardine sings a most vigorous lead.  The other side is 'Wonderful', which I only heard improvised at the piano with the boys humming the theme for Paul [McCartney]'."

5/6: "Today's Disc & Music Echo reports Taylor saying: 'In truth, every beautifully designed, finely wrought inspirationally-welded piece of music ... has been SCRAPPED'."

5/11: "Gold Star studio (A), Los Angeles, CA.  Back in California, unaffected (and possibly invigorated by) Taylor's statement of the 6th, Brian returns to the studio and 'sweetens' his March 2nd mixdown of 'Heroes and Villains'."

5/16, 5/17, 5/18: ILTSDD sessions.

5/19: ILTSDD session (cancelled).

6/3: Recording of Smiley Smile begins.

Thanks Jeff. Good to have fuller quotes in some context.

Altham in NME was reporting what he heard from Brian Wilson, that the 12 tracks were ready to go.

Well, NME was a weekly publication, so even considering its publication being based on another continent, this indicates a pretty narrow window between 'twelve tracks are ready to go' and 'the album is scrapped'. Add in GF's inference that it wasn't Brian who called 'scrapped' on the record, and I'm more deeply intrigued by the events of late-April than I ever thought I might be.

April 29 1967 Brian is reported by Keith Altham in the UK press to have said the album is ready to go, 12 tracks, and mentions a "rush schedule" around the release.

Ah, cheers. Was this in a monthly/weekly/daily publication, do you know?

Who told Derek Taylor that Smile was "scrapped"?

I thought this was published during Taylor's second stint as PR rep for the BBs, which means the statement must have been known of by Brian, if not actively approved/suggested by him. I may well be wrong though.

I'll answer that. Taylor's statements were the second week of May 1967, May 10th or so. April 29th Brian Wilson said the twelve tracks were finished and ready to be released.

See the contradiction? Like vegetables being a single, these words were very fleeting sometimes and changed often. Snapshots in time. So if Brian says it;s coming out, and just over a week later Taylor says Brian scrapped it...was Taylor right?

I don't think anyone's disagreeing that plans were quickly changing around this time. In fact, that's a key premise of the 'April-Veggies-as-post-Smile-single' argument, for me at least. Can someone provide the full quote from April 29 about Brian saying the 'twelve tracks were finished' (sorry if I've missed it above)? Any idea of the delay between quotation and publication? This seems to be a critical factor here.

Re: Taylor's announcement in 'Echo': Even if we go with the date of publication being the same as the date of writing (which it almost certainly wasn't, for obvious reasons), we're talking three weeks after the last Veggies session that this gets published.

I find it hard to believe there wasn't some extended period of thought/discussion 'within the camp' about whether or not to abandon the album taking place for some time. And, even after it was more-or-less decided, at least some real pause for thought before their PR man publically announced that the long-awaited 'Smile' LP was 'SCRAPPED'.

If Al recalls the April 'Veggies' sessions as being 'post-Smile' - and the rest of his recollections in that interview seem to check out - then all the above considered, I'm inclined to believe him.

When did Derek Taylor's announcement that Smile had been scrapped appear in the press, and in what publication? That for many - existing as an actual public report that the project had been scrapped - might be the point where it was said beyond speculation that Smile was not going to be coming out.

May 6, Music and Disc Echo.

If the articles are read in sequence (including ones I didn't clip and post), the span of time where Vegetables was thought to be a single was very short, a few weeks if that.

Sure, but isn't this in line with the actual recording history too? The 'Vega-Tables' sessions in April only last for 'a few weeks if that' (actually, only nine days, 4-12 April) and these intersect both with the dates given by Al Jardine in the relevant interview, and the articles which suggest this was to be the next single. So I can't see how these clippings contradict the notion that the 'April sessions' were for an aborted, 'post-Smile' single version of Veggies, presumably to replace H&V as a 45 release. I agree that plans obviously changed - as seems to have been pretty common in early '67 - but again, I can't see how what you've posted above discounts a brief attempt at Veggies as a 'post-Smile' A-side, before the focus shifted toward something else/back to H&V.

Of course, I may well be misunderstanding your argument completely, in which case I apologise.

With all due respect to our ears, I don't think they are going to be definitive in this case.  By that criteria my ears would probably tell me the October version was the Smiley version.

I didn't say The April version was the Smiley version, I said the June Smiley version was the Smiley version.  I said the October version would be the SMiLE version.  

I'm agreeing with Al that what he/they did in April was post-SMiLE and also probably for a single, the new " ‘Vege-tables’ (the spelling may be wrong) a light and lyrical day-to-day green-grocer song on which AL JARDINE sings a most vigorous lead" single Disc & Music Echo revealed in their April 22 issue (which info probably came from sometime between April 18 and 11 or earlier).

Again, for what it's worth (and I concede that's probably very little) I'm leaning toward what Cam suggests here. Interestingly, on the subject of what 'our ears hear', here's Vosse in '69:

'Vegetables" is another one that could have been, but wasn't quite, but almost was. On Smiley Smile, though, it's really pretty close to the way it was meant to be done...'

Now, to my ears at least - much as Cam suggests above - the 'Cornucopia' and 'Smiley Smile' versions of the song (laidback, limited musical backing, short'n'simple) are much closer to each other than the intervening GV/H&V-style 'modular' version they seem to have been working toward in April. So Vosse's comments support the idea of 'Cornucopia' as the ur-Veggies, the general approach to which was returned to in late '67 for Smiley, with the April version the anomaly. The years of bootlegged and official 'Vegetables' mixes, since 1993, which concentrate on the more complex April material well may have warped our views on what should constitute a 'legitimate' 'Smile-era' Veggies.

EDIT: Sorry, Guitarfool! Connection problems meant this ended up getting online moments after your very similar breakdown of recording!

Very interesting discussion. Have been away for a few days, but did Bicycle Rider ever locate the quote (from circa April '67) about Brian being 'working on The Elements' at that time? Have taken a quick read of the intervening pages but couldn't spot it if so. If that quote does exist, it would surely constitute a 'primary source' back-up to Brown's later recollections about BW working on 'The Elements Suite' when McCartney visited the studio - and was present as Al worked on Vegetables.

My gut tells me that Cam is onto something with the notion that the 'Smile' Veggies is Cornucopia (taped, possibly, in October), presumably the same version recalled in Teen Set by Vosse as follows: 'a funky, silly, joyous little ode to VEGA-TABLES. A young pop artist is commissioned to do a vega-table painting for the album, and the Wilson creative process continues.'

If Al is correct (and implied by the clipping posted by Guitarfool above) then the April version is a 'post-Smile' single version intended to replace 'Heroes and Villians' as a 45 release, when Brian 'decided [he was] unhappy with [H&V's] overall sound and... dumped it'.

Which would make 'Vegetables', as released on Smiley Smile, the third distinct version of the song to be attempted, and the only one to be completed to the band's satisfaction.

Then again, my gut tells me a diet consisting exclusively of red wine and spaghetti is a good idea, so I'm not sure it should entirely be trusted. How this all relates to whatever 'Elements' material Brian may have been recording in April 1967 rather depends on locating the clipping from LLVS in which he apparently discusses it.