[Oct/Nov:]

Further to my epic post above, and bearing in mind the ongoing discussion of 'Part 1/Part 2' master numbers, is this a plausible piece of conjecture:

Oct/Nov: H&V includes - Verses, IIGS, Barnyard (possibly 'Children Were Raised' and 'Three Score', possibly not), the backing being played to the reporter in New York and giving Brian the idea for a nascent 'music video' as inspired by the 'Barnyard' section [Teen Set]

Mid-Nov/Dec (after the 13/14 Nov 'OMP/YAMS/Barnshine' creation and development related by Vosse) - H&V includes (at least): Verses, OMP/YAMs, 'Barnshine' 'finale'. This then 'develops into' - ie. is followed by/related to - 'Barnyard' proper, IIGS and 'I Wanna Be Around/Workshop (Great Shape)', now grouped under the title 'I'm in Great Shape' as per the memo.

This could be seen as effectively a 'Heroes Part II'; certainly IIGS and Barnyard first appear in recorded history as part of that song. Regarding YAMS, this seems to have been a part of 'Heroes' - if not the underlying musical basis, as described by Al Kooper - in May '66, before re-emerging in the middle of November and appearing (with a certain level of uncertainty indicated by the scribbled-out parentheses) on the Capitol tracklisting in Dec.

'PAUL: When I was there in December, Brian was thinking of "Heroes & Villains" as the single.
DAVID: Right. He would think of "Heroes & Villains," and then he would call up two nights later and say it was going to be this, and it was going to be that, and it was going to be "Heroes & Villains" again, and then everyone said, No, Brian, it should be "Heroes & Villains," no Brian it should be this...’
[Crawdaddy! Pt II, May 1968]

VOSSE: ‘So, in the studio, things were going off and on: the album was moving very slowly, and it missed its Christmas release -- so at that point they decided to concentrate on the single, "Heroes and Villains" - of which there must have been a dozen versions. The best version I heard, which was never completed, but at least I could see the form of it, was an A side B side version lasting about six minutes. It was a beautifully structured work; and Van Dyke was still very involved.’
[Fusion, 1969]

Jan '67: Work continues/begins on a dedicated 'two part' Heroes. Now IIGS and Barnyard (appear to have been) have been siphoned off from the version described under 'Oct/Nov', and 'Workshop' possibly devised to supplement them, January sees logged sessions occur on the 3rd, 20th and 27th (under master number #57020) for what Cam persuasively argues may have been 'Heroes Pt I', the A-side of a projected two-sided single. These are mainly vocal sessions, with limited percussive and piano accompaniment. These recordings also produce relatively brief, musically stand-alone sections ('Do a Lot'/'Cantina') and transitions  ('Mission Pak'/'Bridge to Indians'). No further vocal or tracking work on the verses - the first two of these being the only common factor between all known full edits of the song - occurs. There is also a Jan 5 session for the 'Bicycle Rider' chorus vocals, logged as 'Heroes and Villians Part 2' - the first use of Master #57045, and the first time the 'Part 2' nomenclature appears in the logs for H&V. Interestingly, it's also the first recorded incidence we have of a section of one SMiLE song being re-recorded for apparent inclusion in another.

About this time, many of the 'Vosse Posse' - key collaborators and confidants during the late '66 period - are beginning to, or have made their departures.

Feb '67: Known sessions occur on the 15th, 20th, 27th and 28th; (according to logs, tapes missing) vocal sessions also took place on the 24th and 26th. Going by the master numbers, if we assume Cam's part 1/part 2 argument to be correct, most of the month (until that of the 27th) is spent producing/replacing further sections for the A-side of the single. First up is a remake of Part 2 of 'The Old Master Painter', complete with concluding flutterhorn, now entitled 'Prelude to Fade'. (VDP is present and apparently actively involved at this session.) The next thing recorded (exact date unknown) seems to be a tack piano version of 'Heroes and Villians: Piano Theme', including parts based on the DYLW chorus. These two sections, edited in this sequence could - and I emphasis, could - have been intended as the 'Prelude to' and 'Fade' respectively of the A-side as it then stood.

The 20th sees mainly vocal performances (with Brian's tack piano backing) of more short sections, such as 'Gee' and 'Part 3 (Animals)', all still under the same master number (#57020) as that used in January. The 'Bicycle Rider' section repurposed from DYLW is now seemingly a key part of 'Heroes', with multiple vocal variations on this theme attempted. The 'single version' first released on the 1990 'Smiley Smile/Wild Honey' twofer is apparently mixed around this time; apart from 'Cantina', 'Children Were Raised' (both tracked in Jan) and (sorta) the 'Prelude to Fade' (15 Feb) this edit apparently features comparatively little of the new material recorded in the post '66 sessions.

Work starts to slow down again: the 27th sees the final (as in used in the eventual single release) backing recorded for the 'Bicycle Rider'-derived chorus, now called 'Heroes and Villians: Part Two'. Interestingly, this also sees the use of the master number #57045. On the 28th, the 'Old Master Painter' coda is re-recorded again, called simply 'Fade', with Van Dyke Parks once again in the studio. ('Not that it matters,' to quote the seminal English comedian Peter Cook, 'but it is important.') At this point, the section is also recorded under Master #57045, possibly implying it's now meant to close off Part Two.

March 3: The verse is remade, and the 'Intro: Early Version' ('Chimes') section remade into what would later be known as the 'Fire Intro'. These are both under master #57045. Work is then effectively suspended on the number until June.

Cam - sorry for the turnabout, and especially if you've covered this elsewhere - but what's your position on why a verse remake would occur under a 'Part Two' master number? Do you think it's likely that Brian intended to use the original verse backing for the A-side, and a new, simplified form for the B?.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but going through the sessionography this aspect does confuse me a bit.

Double post.

Theres one of you I think is pretty two-faced, mean-spirited and even more pompous than me if thats possible, and I could leak the Private Messages to prove it, but its not worth the time and you know who you are.

I think I know who that person is, and I'm sorry. I can get a bit frustrated with how things are argued on these threads, sure, and probably posted some things I shouldn't have. This was never my intention. Hope you come back some time.

Thanks, ash.  Maybe someone has pointed this out in the past and I don't remember it or missed it because it's always been smack dab simple and in plain sight, but I feel like I've cracked the code on a 50 year old mystery.

(Stuff guys say just before they are proven wrong)

I only just realized that in all my pontifications on Heroes etc, here and on various threads, I've never offered my thanks to Cam for identifying the fact of the respective early '67 master numbers, and putting together a very solid thesis regarding the 'A side/B side' version of Heroes on the basis of them. Part of this is simply because - in the light of contradictory data coming to light - I was quickly satisfied that the 'code' was indeed 'cracked' (this part of it, anyway) and didn't feel I had any further comment to make on the subject. But I do think it's an excellent insight, and sound piece of reasoning, that has shone some light on one of the big SMiLE mysteries. So thank you, Cam.

Regarding part 1 and part 2 - didn't Vosse say BW had recorded it but not edited it together ?

Is this the quote you're referring to?

"[ S ]o at that point they decided to concentrate on the single, "Heroes and Villains" - of which there must have been a dozen versions. The best version I heard, which was never completed, but at least I could see the form of it, was an A side B side version lasting about six minutes. It was a beautifully structured work; and Van Dyke was still very involved.'
[Fusion, 1969]

I'm not a Dylan expert, but wasn't LARS master recorded as a single master take?

Yep. The issued LARS is Take 4 (second day), though there were no less than 11 subsequent attempts, funnily enough. It was only released on two sides of a 45 as it was believed DJs were unlikely to play a six minute track on the air, though many in fact bodged the two halves together, and did.

I think of that description of the acetates as urban legend, it's the SMiLE equivalent of Big Foot.  I'm not saying it's wrong, but it would make waaaaay more sense if that poster was just simply mistaken!  

If you have a look through that thread, 'andy' gives pretty solid evidence that he did in fact hear the acetates and the circumstances under which he heard them, despite some initial and understandable skepticism from other posters. So 'urban legend' - unless one's suggesting 'andy' was lying in a pretty major way, or I'm misunderstanding your use of the term - seems a bit over the top here.

This is my problem with that description of the Durie acetate...  The harpsichord was underneath the Smiley Smile recut of My Children, tracked in June.  Just exactly as you said above, why would the Parks have an acetate of June recordings?  Wasn't VDP gone by then?  And just as you said, was Brian really using IIGS in H&V in June? I suppose he could have, but is it probable?  

Right, so in context of your points above, we seem to have the following three options:

A) 'Andy' never heard - or substantively misremembered, despite posting his descriptions (apparently) only a short time after listening to the acetates - an edit of H&V which included a harpsichord backing for 'Children Were Raised', following a version of IIGS
B) 'Andy' heard an edit of H&V that included the harpsichord backing from the single version of 'Children Were Raised', following a version of IIGS, which was provided to the Parks in June (or later) of 1967
C) 'Andy' heard an edit of H&V that included an otherwise unbooted/unreleased harpsichord backing, following a version of IIGS, similar to that in the single version of 'Children Were Raised', which was provided to the Parks in late 1966/early 1967

Of these, A strikes me - on re-reading the related thread - as the least likely. B is possible, but doesn't seem all that likely either, for the reasons I think we agreed on above. Going by the principle of Ockham's razor, this would seem (to me, natch) to leave C (the least obviously unlikely to be true) as the most sensible position to take - bearing in mind this might well change should new info come to light.

EDIT: Crud. The final acetate includes the backing of the Redwood version of 'Time to Get Alone', cut in October '67. So who knows? Maybe IIGS really was thrown back into the mix for a bit in June '67, and the Parks supplied with a dub of it. As you were.

Going over the session chronology, I'd say the December 1966 H&V would just have been simply Verse -> IIGS -> Barnyard, with possibly Chimes as an intro.

A further thought - as I largely agree with what you've posted above:

The idea of the 'three minute musical comedy' - and I wish I could identify where that phrase came from; I'm sure someone else here can - has always intrigued me. By my estimation, the backing track for verses 1 & 2 of H&V (sans the acapella follow-up), IIGS and Barnyard get to about 2 minutes altogether. So, going by the 'Humble Harv' structure, at least, this allows another minute's worth of material. 'Intro to Part 3' fills most of this time, if we assume it was going to be edited in at full length. But I can't help but feel that Brian Wilson - a master at pop structure - would have included at least one repetition of the song's titular musical theme.

So, if indeed (and I do concede, pending responses to my post above, there may not be an if in the first place) there is an unyet-heard-by-the-masses '66 recording of 'Children are Raised', this and 'Three Score and Five' (about forty seconds altogether, depending on 'whistling bridge' etc) might well have constituted the 'Part 3' indicated by the nomenclature of the keyboard-and-percussion 'Chimes' section we've both mentioned above.

The problem is that the My Children section wasn't recorded until 1/27/67.  So your above described configuration from the Durrie Parks acetate couldn't have existed in 1966.

Quite correct, SNL. I hadn't remembered - until reading your post and checking the TSS book - that the 'Often' version was recorded as late as that, and I'm grateful to you for pointing it out. Which means, if the description of that particular acetate is correct, there might be a version of 'Heroes' as late as Feb '67 (or, I suppose, later) which includes IIGS. Which is pretty interesting in and of itself.

What now mystifies me about this - unless I'm forgetting something obvious, which is quite likely - is the quoted

'harpsichord playing that's underneath "my children were raised, you know they...", from the official H&V single'.

I've just been listening to the '67 single, and it sounds largely acapella until the close of the verse, much like the 'often'-including version from the Feb mix. My ears (or laptop speakers) are probably faulty here - anyone able to add to this?

The TSS sessionography for Jan 27 lists only the vocalists, 'thigh slap' [Brian], 'Brillo pad percussion' [Dennis] and tack piano [Brian, apparently just the closing, very audible chords leading into 'Three score and five' on the Feb 'single version'l. If 'andy' did indeed hear a backing harpsichord in the DP acetate for this part - and that isn't, in fact, present on either version of this section which survive - then this might mean an earlier (or, I concede, later) version of 'Children Were Raised' that we're not otherwise aware of. Which would still allow for the possibility the acetate dates from '66, and one of the - probably several - 'Heroes' sessions for which no records or tapes currently exist.

Or I'm just not hearing/aware of a harpsichord in the June mix, which is quite possible too. Were the Parks still likely to be getting dubs of tracks as late as June and 'the single version'?

[February '66:]

Righto, going to have a go here at synthesizing the information available to us into some kind of timeline for 'Heroes'. I'll note whenever my own guesses or supposition come into play. Please disregard if it's not OT - or at least not in line with how the thread has developed.

February '66: VDP and BW 'reconnect' at a lawn party at Terry Melcher's house. [source: Wikipedia, and apparently the BW ‘autobiography’. Corrections and/or further information welcomed.] Pet Sounds is now complete, although work on a song initially recorded during those sessions - GV - continues.

‘Early May’ '66: The collaboration between VDP and BW begins with 'Heroes and Villians', written in 'the sandbox' in Wilson's home. [Badman, 2004] Both credit the other for the title, VDP saying: "I think he made that up. I think it was a great title, and he suggested it. To me, 'Heroes And Villains' sounds like a ballad out of the Southwest. That’s what it was intended to be—as good as any of those—and, really, to be a ballad. This Spanish and Indian fascination is a big chapter in Californian history, and that’s what it’s supposed to be—historically reflective, to reflect this place. I think it did it." [Priore, 2005]

May 11 '66: The first tracking session for H&V is held at Gold Star Studio A, including four sax players and, notably, apparently no French or 'flutterhorn' player. The resultant master is assigned the number #55999, and is timed at 2:45. Since the events described in the entry above are dated as 'Early May' by Badman, this means a total possible interval of ten days between the initial songwriting collaboration by VDP and BW and its recording in studio.

Later May ‘66: Al Kooper: ‘He also played me a rough tape of ‘Heroes and Villains’, which evolved, I believe, from a Wilson revamping of ‘You Are My Sunshine’.” [Kooper; Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards, 2008]

Further, as related by Cam Mott earlier in this thread, quoting from his own email correspondance with Kooper in 2000:

[Cam]: Was the version of Brian Wilson's "Heroes and Villains" you heard at Brian's house in May '66 much different than the version that was released as a 45 and on Smiley Smile or the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" boxset?

Al: yes-it was interpolated with "you are my sunshine." go figure…
Al Kooper 6/10/00

Al: IT WAS ACTUALLY JUST A BIZARRE ARRANGEMENT OF "SUNSHINE" HE MUST HAVE DECIDED LATER TO MAKE HIS OWN SONG OVER THE TRACK - THATS MY GUESS. ASK HIM - HE'S STILL ALIVE.
Al Kooper 9/21/00

Supposition: Is it possible, going from the above, that the VDP/BW collaboration began following this recording, perhaps as a result of it? Kooper certainly seems to suggest that this early version of ‘H&V’ didn’t so much feature a ‘YAMS’ section as was based upon a ‘bizarre arrangement’ of the traditional tune. If this is the case, it supports the idea - as do Parks’ recollections above - that BW’s first ‘assignment’ for VDP was providing new lyrics for a vague musical/thematic concept he had in mind; much like his prior work with Tony Asher - or, more specifically, an existing composition the lyrics/melody for which he had since grown dissatisfied (cf. ‘In My Childhood’/’You Still Believe in Me’.)

20 Oct ‘66: An afternoon’s tracking session occurs at Western Studio 3. Sections recorded are the ‘Verse’ and ‘Barnyard’.

27 Oct ‘66: ‘I’m in Great Shape’ tracked, under the title ‘Heroes and Villains: I’m in Great Shape’. [A vocal session under the title ‘I’m in Great Shape’ with all six Beach Boys appears to have been taped ten days earlier at Columbia Studio A, which C-man posits might have been the ‘Vega-Tables’ Cornucopia version - though this remains uncertain.]

4 Nov ‘66: Brian and VDP meet with DJ ‘Humble Harv’ Miller in the evening at Western Studio 3. A ‘demo’ piano-and-voice run through of H&V is taped, as well as some introductory chat, incorporating the first two verses of H&V (lyrics as released), Brian’s vocal imitation of a flutterhorn, ‘I’m in Great Shape’ - and ‘here’s another section, now’ - two attempts at Barnyard, the second apparently mainly so Brian can coax the right animal noises out of VDP.

Circa Nov/Dec ‘66: 'Brian sits in his bedroom playing the background track to "Heroes and Villains' for a reporter from New York. As the barnyard section comes over the speaker Brian leaps off of his bed. "I'VE GOT IT!" He laughs and jumps into the center of the room. "It's a color short. 16 mm. I'll shoot it. Next week. It's a chicken, and the chicken is wearing TENNIS SHOES. The chicken is wearing tennis shoes and he is bopping around the most beautiful pad. Paul Robbins' pad. Somebody get Robbins on the phone. We've got to shoot it next week!"' (from Teen Set, ‘67)

Supposition: If this extract is accurate, it implies an least partially sequenced ‘Heroes and Villians’ backing track which included ‘Barnyard’ existed at some point. Certainly the ‘demo’ as well as Siegel [in ‘Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!, 1967] confirm chickens played a key role in the lyric for this section: ‘Out in the farmyard the cook is chopping lumber; out in the barnyard the chickens do their number… [...] [C]ivilized chickens bobbed up and down in a tiny ballet of comic barnyard melody.’

13/14 Nov ‘66: ‘'It is a crisp, clear November night, and from Brian Wilson's living room, high atop Beverly Hills, the city glistens in patterns of light. Wilson sits at his piano. [...] Wilson turns to no one in particular and speaks. "'You Are My Sunshine' can happen another way. Listen." He plays a mournful series of chord patterns while singing a sad revision of the song "You were my sunshine, my only sunshine ..." The next night he is back at Goldstar and a studio full of cellos, strings, and percussion performing those same poignant chords.'
(Teen Set, '67)

‘Vosse: So one night we were over at his house and he started playing "You Are My Sunshine" by ... [...] Well, Brian started playing it slowly—almost like an R&B thing— just slowing down the tempo: really mournful. [...] and he started doing a "you were my sunshine" thing: he put the song in the past tune—and he was trying to find his bass rhythm for it: and in doing that he found this weird little riff that just sort of developed. And it hit him, man, right then that he wanted a barn yard—he wanted Old MacDonald's farm—he wanted all that stuff. So he immediately got Van Dyke over and they did a chart for "You were my sunshine," which ... It's so hard to remember exactly what he wound up doing because he changed things so much ... he wound up writing a clarinet part for it which is impossible to describe: a whole different sound that he found in the middle of all this ... and it developed into an instrumental thing with barnyard sounds—people sawing—he had people in the studio sawing on wood—and Van Dyke being a duck—and it was marvelous. It made you smile and at the same time touched you.’
[Fusion, 1969]

Nov 29, ‘66: ‘I Wanna Be Around/Workshop’ tracked - session logs give this recording the notation ‘(Great Shape)’.

'"Brian Wilson is cutting an album. He wants the sounds of a workshop for background on one of the tracks.’ [Teen Set]

Nov 30, ‘66: Dennis’ lead vocal for ‘You [Were] My Sunshine’ is taped, and the two parts (OMP/YAMS and the Part Two 'finale’/’Barnshine’ fade) edited together on this date. [TSS]

Supposition: Re: ‘You Are My Sunshine’ - there appear to be at least three separate SMiLE tracking sessions referenced in the above quotation from ‘Fusion’. ‘Heroes and Villians: Barnyard’ recorded (tracking and possibly backing vocals) at the second H&V session on 20 October; the past tense ‘You Were My Sunshine’ and preceding ‘Old Master Painter’ extract (‘he wound up writing a clarinet part for it which is impossible to describe’) recorded on 14 Nov; and 'IWBA/Workshop’ recorded on 29 Nov. It also appears to be the case that the traditional YAMS had indeed provided some of the impetus for H&V as far back as May.

So, one possible reading of this data: Mid-May ‘66, BW and VDP begin writing what is essentially a new song called ‘Heroes and Villians’, based on the music devised for the May 11 recording. 'Barnyard’ and ‘IIGS’ sections are written during the compositional process, and tracked as sections of H&V, as evidenced by the ‘demo’, the session logs, and the Teen Set excerpt. As part of this fresh start, YAMS is removed from the sequence, but it remains part of the fabric of the song for Brian, at least. Later, in November, Brian begins tooling around with the traditional tune again, finding a way to transform it into a minor key and past tense. Vosse recalls this ‘developed into [...] animal sounds’ - presumably the already recorded Heroes section ‘Barnyard’ - and, with greater, emphasis, the ‘Workshop’ recording. From this perspective, the apparent confusion over ‘what went with what’ is fairly understandable: if ‘Barnyard’ was a compositional surrogate for ‘YAMS’ in the second, BW/VDP version of H&V in mid ‘66, then it’s no surprise that Brian might connect the two later in ‘Nov in the circumstances Vosse describes. Further thoughts on ‘Workshop’ - and the sections later excised from H&V - in further supposition after the December diary entries.

Nov/Dec ‘66 [?]: One of the Durrie Parks acetates contains the following partial edit of 'Heroes and Villians', as described by ‘andy’ on these Boards:

In two clearly spliced edits (speaking of which, I can't remember if IIGS had the tape distortion effect the earlier takes had, but if it did it was much, much more subtle), IGGS went directly into the harpsichord playing that's underneath "my children were raised, you know they...", from the official H&V single, but with the arrangement from H&V part 1 from the SS/WH twofer that goes into "healthy wealthy and OFTEN wise" (all with no vocals), then directly into the full instrumental arrangement behind "three score and five", and that then played out until the finish of the acetate.'

One can’t be sure, as dates are not available, but since none of the released ‘67 mixes or recording sessions contain any sign of IIGS (and, indeed, the Feb ‘single version’ features the 'Cantina' section in what appears to be the same spot, and ends with a re-recording of the OMP/YAMS fade, one of the first ‘cannibalisations’ of one SMiLE track into another), I’d say a pre-’67 dating for this assembly seems to be a reasonable assumption.

Dec ‘66 [?]: ‘Heroes and Villians: Intro [Early Version]’ (also referred to as ‘intro to part 3’) tracked.

13 [?] Dec ‘66*: ‘The Beach Boys are back from Europe, Thanksgiving has just passed and an awesome recording schedule faces them. The new album "Smile" and the new single "Heroes and Villains" must be completed by Christmas. Day and night and long weekend sessions are planned. Mike Love, Carl Wilson and Al Jardine huddle around one of the big playback speakers at Columbia Records, studio A ... (Brian records all over town—Western, Goldstar, Columbia .) .. twelve takes on one small section of background voices for "Heroes and Villains" have just been completed. Mike is not quite satisfied with his singing on a few bars. They go back into the studio. Over and over they re-record the difficult and complex harmony pattern until it is perfect. Then Brian takes them to the piano and teaches them more background to be overdubbed. The creative process here is as spontaneous as in the earlier track sessions. Carl has an idea and goes to the microphone alone laying in a lovely and funny little riff behind the choral effect.’
[Teen Set, Jan ‘67 - presumably referring to either the verse backing or the acapella section that follows the first two verses on most edits - * courtesy Andrew G Doe, via the research of C-Man - this is the earliest known ‘H&V’ vocal session if one doesn’t count the lost ‘I’m in Great Shape’ recording of 17 Oct]

Mid Dec ‘66: The ‘Capitol memo’ giving the 'not in correct order' tracklisting is apparently composed, including ‘I’m in Great Shape’ as a separate listing. Also worthy of note: the inclusion of ‘The Old Master Painter’ in scribbled-out parentheses.

Late Dec ‘66:
'PAUL: When I was there in December, Brian was thinking of "Heroes & Villains" as the single.
DAVID: Right. He would think of "Heroes & Villains," and then he would call up two nights later and say it was going to be this, and it was going to be that, and it was going to be "Heroes & Villains" again, and then everyone said, No, Brian, it should be "Heroes & Villains," no Brian it should be this...’
[Crawdaddy! Pt II, May 1968]

Conclusion (guesswork on the basis of above):

There are three major 1966 iterations of ‘Heroes and Villians’. The first, an instrumental recording tracked in mid-May and apparently played to Al Kooper from an acetate later that month, is an experimental catalyst for the song as we know it, a thematic concept based around a ‘bizarre arrangement’ of ‘You Are My Sunshine’. What’s more, it appears to have been recorded in a single 2:45 take (the third take providing the master) - already a far cry in approach from the deliberately ‘modular’ assembly of different tracking sections apparently undertaken in October, and also from the similarly-fragmented song with this name eventually released in mid-’67.

The second iteration is written by Brian and Van Dyke Parks, beginning sometime in May (and possibly completed, in compositional terms, that same month). By October 1966, at the latest, it includes sections entitled ‘I’m in Great Shape’ and ‘Barnyard’. Combining the ‘Humble Harv’ demo of November 4th ('Miller is excited: “That is going to be the greatest record anybody's ever heard"' - Teen Set) and the the ‘Durrie Parks’ assembly of three sections of the song, we have a possible sequence for [some of] this version as follows:

[from 'Humble Harv':] Verse - I've been in this town so long/Verse - Once at night, Cotillion squared the fight/Flutter-horn transition/IIGS - Fresh Clean-Zen Air/[from DP acetate:] My children were born, they suddenly rise/Verse - At three score and five/[from 'Humble Harv', ‘here’s another section now’:] Barnyard.

Mid November, and on the evening of the 13th at his home, ‘a little high, I guess’, Brian returns to that initial May ‘66 fascination with ‘You Are My Sunshine’, only now putting it into a minor key and ‘the past tune’. He and Van Dyke put together some charts, and the number - including a new, major key pastoral coda (latterly known by fans as ‘Barnshine’, or ‘False Barnyard’) is tracked the following day. A subsequent ‘development’ from the YAMS experimenting, ‘IWBA/Workshop’, is recorded two weeks later, marked as ‘Great Shape’ on the logs.

December - pressure for a single mounts [Anderle/Vosse]. ‘Heroes’, by virtue of being ‘the closest thing to being finished, at that point’ [Anderle] is nominated. At the same time, the covers for the album need to be designed in preparation for a January release, and for the first time since the October session logs, the phrase ‘I’m in Great Shape’ appears in print. So does a track called ‘The Old Master Painter’ - though the parentheses included and then scratched out on the Capitol tracklist suggests the writer was unsure whether this two-part assembly would constitute its own track, or be a part of something else.

One possible interpretation of the above: Around mid-November, YAMS is recalled by Brian, re-enters ‘the mix’, and is possibly planned to conclude an expanded or revised ‘H&V’: indeed, possibly to provide an explicit ‘[grand] finale’ (as Part Two is described on the session tape). This is one possible explanation for the uncertainty on the memo as to whether the medley was in fact a standalone track.

As one result of this initiative, and/or the need for a more commercial/unified version of ‘Heroes’ for A-side release, the decision is also made to take IIGS, at least, and possibly ‘Barnyard’ too (as Vosse’s recollections could be seen to support the notion that the rural coda was at this time amended from the original ‘Barnyard’ tracking to the OMP ‘Part Two’ fade, also to be eventually added with high, wordless backing vocals by Brian) and build a new multi-section track around them. (An H&V ‘part two’, if you will.) ‘I Wanna Be Around (Great Shape)’ is conceived and taped in late November, quite possibly to provide some more meat on the bones of this new addition to the album's tracklisting.

That’s one interpretation of all of this stuff, anyway.

Which brings us to the end of 1966. I’ll head into Jan and Feb ‘67 in the next couple of days, if there’s any interest in me doing so. In the meantime, I’d be interested to hear any thoughts others have about the above.

For all we know, Brian heard IWBA one night and came up with the rebuilding joke and decided to include it on the album but, like the other fragments, thought it needed more, looked at the giant modular jigsaw puzzle with no directions in front of him and decided then and there that "Great Shape" was the Tab A to his IWBA joke's Slot B. 

I like this idea.

Hi Guitarfool, when I said 'surprising' I didn't mean to imply that Vosse's two accounts were - either deliberately or accidentally - likely to be inaccurate, or should be held to a higher degree of scrutiny than other accounts. Simply that in a three year window it's quite possible for memories to fade or alter, and yet where both 'Teen Set' and 'Fusion' relate the same incident, the details related in them chime very closely. The recording/mixing of the 'Wind Chimes' tag and the origin of the past-tense 'You Are My Sunshine' spring particularly to mind. (Also, as I wrote above, that the dates given in the 'Teen Set' article in particular, despite its origins as a 'puff piece' for the Capitol mag, prove right on-the-money when cross-referenced with the recorded chronology.) So I think, in fact, we're making the same point here.

I agree it's a shame Vosse hasn't written/said more on the subject, as his two substantive articles provide, for my money, the most in-depth, specific, and yes, consistent accounts of the late '66 period, particularly as regard the writing and recording aspects of SMiLE. (Siegel's article provides a useful larger context, as well as making a case for Brian's emotional and creative state at the time, but in terms of the songs/recording really only goes into any depth on 'Fire' and 'Surf's Up'. Anderle and Williams' is a revealing but comparatively freeform trawl through Anderle's thoughts on his relationship with Brian.)

It's good to excerpt by song, yes, but at the same time I think a reference where the articles are presented verbatim as they appeared may be just as if not more valuable in order to have the original context that anyone can see for reference, especially if these words start getting parsed and pulled out of context as so often has happened.

I might not be understanding you here, but one of the reasons for the collation was to provide a different prism through which to view the differing accounts of the songs and, to an extent, the development of the album. (I could also have done sections on, 'where the project started to falter' and 'Brian's relationship with the Boys/Murray', etc, but I feel these discussions have been a) well-covered on the Board, often with reference to the articles above and b) were less appropriate to apply the 'oral history' approach to than the development and recording of, say, 'Heroes and Villains' or 'Surf's Up'.)

I absolutely concur that a full reading of each article, with the observations presented in context, is crucial - and, in fact, rather assumed that's what LLVS is for, and had been employed as such by many of those here. For those who don't own that tome, all of the articles I extracted and excerpted in the text above from are easily available online, some of them as scans on this very board. Mujan posted some useful links to these pieces early on in this thread, in fact.  

Thank you, Cam.

Many thanks, Andrew - if the session described in Teen Set was not long after Thanksgiving, then a 13 Dec session is the closest on the logs to the scene Vosse describes. And just two days before the notably problematic 'Wonderful'/'Surf's Up' vox session, interestingly enough.

Deleted on grounds of futility.

No, 'policing' other peoples' use of historical data should not be necessary, or my responsibility, I agree. But since I spent hours formatting and annotating a ready resource (including full attribution and dating where possible) - on a thread of which you are aware, and indeed thanked me for establishing - which will allow you, and me, and other posters to quote accurately and responsibly the specific article, among others, upon which you 'dissertated' above ... then yes, I think I have the right to express my frustration that you've continued to populate this thread with largely selective, paraphrased references which - I suspect, not coincidentally - support your pre-existing positions on the SMiLE album.

EDIT: Are we done now with this now, Mujan? Do you recognize any truth in what I wrote above ? I hope so. If not, back to me not engaging with your posts, and continuing to enjoy some otherwise diverting and insightful threads.

Hi Mujan, appreciate these thoughts - one of the reasons I put together an extensive collection of quotes for another thread was so a clear summary of what was said, and in some sort of context, was available for quotation when discussing these matters. More to the point, that clear attribution - in relation to these articles - could be made when discussing particular recordings. This said:

The description of the piano piece and how it was made really gets me thinking. I believe perhaps its possible that a lot of the more off the wall ideas like perhaps Talking Horns' various sections and other more obscure SMiLE pieces might have been ideas he didnt know how was going to work...and couldnt get it work.

The 'piano piece' you refer to is clearly the tag to 'Wind Chimes', described by Vosse (twice) as follows:

‘But at the same time [Brian made the Fire recording], he took the tail end of "Wind Chimes" - which the way it was originally recorded was, again much more beautiful than on Smiley Smile - and he had a minute and a half tag on it where he took a stand-up tack piano and a grand piano; and, a track at a time, did little music-box overdubs; and then he went in and mixed them with different echoes on different channels into ... I've never heard anything like it… He was doing everything: he had an engineer there just to punch the tape thing, but he'd go in and mix in between. This was mainly done in Western Three, rather than Gold Star Studios which he used for a few things.
[Fusion, 1969]

‘It is a balmy afternoon in Hollywood. Brian Wilson comes into Studio 3 at Western Recorders for an overdubbing session. In the booth his personal 8-track tape machine is ready to roll. In the studio an old, upright honky-tonk piano and Brian's beautiful black grand piano wait under the microphones. "I have an idea, I'm not sure exactly how this is going to work, but we'll try it." Brian goes to his piano and signals Chuck, the engineer, to roll the tape. He plays a simple music box melody. The tape is run back. On a second track he adds some tinkles on the honky-tonk piano. For about half an hour Wilson goes over the same piece, filling the eight tracks with counterpoints, syncopated gates and notions. "OK, let's hear it." Wilson in the control room, standing close to the center speaker, listens to the playback. He rushes to the board and supervises the throwing of switches and turning of knobs — more echo on the third track, a touch of reverb on the second honky-tonk overdub, this track dry and the other with more highs. Something happens to the sounds; they change, they move around and are transformed into a work of sheer beauty. Everyone in the booth has seen and heard the entire process.’
[Teen Set, Jan ‘67]

And the 'Talking Horns' established as an off-the-cuff idea at a Surf's Up session:

'‘It is another night at Goldstar. A group of older musicians whom Brian has never met are there to perform on French horns. Five minutes after producer meets players, the men are creating laughing effects and having conversation with their horns. "It was just an idea I had, and I'm happy to see it works." How does he do it? Somebody standing in the hallway asks.'"
[Teen Set, Jan ‘67 - describing the ‘Surf’s Up: Talking Horns’ session of Nov 7th, also known as ‘George Fell Into His French Horn’.)

My point here is not that these weren't off-the-cuff experiments that didn't necessarily go anywhere - as you posit - but that they are not random, 'obscure SMiLE pieces', but unused or abandoned mixes of parts of known song sections - in this case, specifically, the horn parts in the 'First Movement' of Surf's Up and a possibly unheard mix of the 'Wind Chimes' tag.

OMP. So this implies the past tense Only Sunshine came in November just one night before the track was officially recorded. So was this the same incident described in Fusion where he transitioned into Barnyard? If thats so, then was Barnyard in fact an early casualty for the sake of Heroes and Villains--perhaps the first? The quote about him always working on a whim certainly explains why the songs changed so much, and in a scenario like that I think its wisest to stick with whats on tape, again physical evidence, when piecing together an attempted historical cut. And looking at the sessions for OMP according to TSS, it looks like they were done 11/14 and later in February. The Humble Harv demo if Im not mistaken, was done 11/4 with Barnyard as part of H&V, and according to TSS Barnyard was done 10/20. If any of these are wrong, please correct me. So is it actually possible Barnyard was a reverse scenario where H&V lost something to another song? Like so much else, Its impossible to say. And we also know Sunshine itself, possibly sans OMP (I believe it was without it) was in Heroes too at one point. Well, Im still going by whats on tape. I believe had Barnyard been intended to be included there would be a test edit made up. It wouldve been SO EASY to do, and according to some of you thats all it would take to finish OMP/Barnyard suite as a track. Plus, again unless Im wrong, Barnyard fades. So how would it be part of OMP--which had a fade recorded after Barnyard was made? It just doesnt add up. I think for whatever reason Brian wanted to fit a past tense Sunshine in there somewhere and possibly VDP talked him into doing a duet of covers, and stuck OMP up front to get the more compelling "losing faith" idea across. VDP did something similar in Song Cycle, he did a cover with water sounds and apparently its meant to be representative of the last song played on the Titanic. It sounds plausible to me. I just think had Barnyard been meant to be on OMP, either it wouldnt fade, or OMP wouldnt have had a fade recorded, or Barnyard wouldve been rerecorded so it didnt fade. While its possible Brian changed his mind too, I just think 10 days is a big leap to give up what was hyped up on the radio as a major section as well. I think its more likely H&V was a conglomeration of Western themed ideas at this time, and as it went on it was decided Barnyard and IIGS didnt really fit the narrative of the song that was forming, so they spun off into a new track...called IIGS. Possibly...POSSIBLY with Workshop and IWBA as other sections meant to be this "Barnyard suite" a counterpoint to the Elements suite on Side 2. Anyones free to disagree but I find this a lot more likely. And again...Im sorry but...OMP/YAMS has nothing to do with a Barnyard. IIGS and Workshop (not so much IWBA tho) do.

Again, here are the relevant quotes (and dates, incidentally) from Vosse - not only from Teen Set, but Fusion too - from the other thread:

THE OLD MASTER PAINTER

'It is a crisp, clear November night, and from Brian Wilson's living room, high atop Beverly Hills, the city glistens in patterns of light. Wilson sits at his piano. Jules Siegel, Saturday Evening Post’s top music journalist, lies on the floor playing catch with Banana, the Wilson beagle. Banana is indefatigable. Siegel has been throwing the ball for twenty minutes. His arm is tired. Banana could go on all night.

Wilson turns to no one in particular and speaks. "'You Are My Sunshine' can happen another way. Listen." He plays a mournful series of chord patterns while singing a sad revision of the song "You were my sunshine, my only sunshine ..." The next night he is back at Goldstar and a studio full of cellos, strings, and percussion performing those same poignant chords. There is no sheet music. There hasn't been time for that. Brian is doing the arrangement on the spot. He prefers to work that way — like Fellini on the set with no script, scurrying about whispering snatches of dialogue into his players' ears.'
[Teen Set, Jan ‘67 - apparently describing the events of 13 and 14 November, 1966]

‘Vosse: And like I said, Brian loves Stephen Foster ... that kind of song. So one night we were over at his house and he started playing "You Are My Sunshine" by ... Who wrote that?
Interviewer: Jimmy Davis, ex-Gov. of Louisiana.
Vosse: I used to go to high school with his son. Well, Brian started playing it slowly—almost like an R&B thing— just slowing down the tempo: really mournful. And we were all a little high, I guess, that night ... and he started doing a "you were my sunshine" thing: he put the song in the past tune—and he was trying to find his bass rhythm for it: and in doing that he found this weird little riff that just sort of developed. And it hit him, man, right then that he wanted a barn yard—he wanted Old MacDonald's farm—he wanted all that stuff. So he immediately got Van Dyke over and they did a chart for "You were my sun shine," which ... It's so hard to remember exactly what he wound up doing because he changed things to much ... he wound up writing a clarinet part for it which is impossible to describe: a whole different sound that he found in the middle of all this ... and it developed into an instrumental thing with barnyard sounds—people sawing—he had people in the studio sawing on wood—and Van Dyke being a duck—and it was marvelous. It made you smile and at the same time touched you.’
[Fusion, 1969]

'"HERE WE GO!" The voice booms over the intercom system and the men spring into action. Saws chew up boards, nails are driven with hammers — the workshop is alive with sounds. In the control room at Goldstar Recording studios in Hollywood, Brian Wilson sits at the board chuckling. “Do you believe it!" He slams his hand down on the arm of the chair. They believe it.

Brian Wilson is cutting an album. He wants the sounds of a workshop for background on one of the tracks. David Oppenheim, Emmy award winning producer of CBS documentaries on Igor Stravinsky and Pablo Casals, sits watching and listening. He believes it. Moments later he is out in the studio, tools in hand, banging and sawing away with the veteran studio musicians.'
[Teen Set '67, describing the events of 29th November 1966]

The above are firsthand, published accounts of how a participant remembered the process of development. As it happens, I largely agree with your take on OMP/Barnyard/Workshop etc. But dressing up supposition as fact, like this:

And again...Im sorry but...OMP/YAMS has nothing to do with a Barnyard. IIGS and Workshop (not so much IWBA tho) do.

in the face of the extracts above really makes me wonder why I bothered in the first place. But let's proceed:

5-OH MY GOD. FINALLY. We have a description of the water sounds he recorded during PS. Hes quoted specifically saying hed have the Boys try something similar when they got back. This unofficial session is described as trying to recreate the feeling of water. Honestly, this is case closed as far as Im concerned. Undersea Chant is the early Water Chant, and therefore the early Water.

Again, one of the reasons I put together - over several hours, mind - what I did is so people would have no reasonable recourse not to quote sources correctly. Specific to the above:

Each person makes and repeats a sound which represents the “feeling" of underwater life to him

The '"feeling" of underwater life' (to that specific individual making the noise, what's more) being distinctly different from "the feeling of water". Unless you're arguing that Brian's attempt to emulate The Elements was, in this case, to empathize with the beings that live within that element, and not capture an aural sense of the element itself. Which you could, I suppose, argue - but you'd need to be willing to articulate it more clearly than above.

Hes quoted specifically saying hed have the Boys try something similar when they got back.

The crucial point here, surely, is that he didn't. The musical and, indeed, thematic connection between even the most atmospheric 'underwater' chanting on PS and the eventual harmonic 'Water Chant', recorded almost exactly a year later, is tenuous if not non-existent. You've been stretching that muscle for a while, Mujan. Your arm must be getting tired.

But then:

6-Im writing this as I go, and what do you know? Talking Horns specifically comes up. And its presented as another successful last minute experiment, although its possible the droning and wailing sounds were not--but either way, whatever. Its possible they were a success too and Brian just never got around to mixing them into SU, and either forgot or changed his mind by '71. Or those parts were meant for something else, tho I have no idea what, and again it was a SU session so...

An excellent and objective, I think, reading of the material.

8-Oh what do you know...AGAIN. Brian is described as listening to Heroes and Villains...and the BARNYARD SECTION comes on. I know it was published in April, but when was this written exactly? Presumably after OMP was recorded in November. CASE FUC|<ING CLOSED.

AGAIN, if you'd bothered to go refer to the listings I put up, you'd see that the Teen Set piece covers events from October to December 1966. Even if you didn't, a cursory reading of the article with reference to the TSS sessionography shows that events within the article occur out of chronological sequence. (And if you then explain that you don't have your copy of the TSS book to hand, I can direct you toward a useful collection of quotes including session dating, wherever possible, on another thread in this board.)

All this proves, therefore - and if we're taking the information within the 'Teen Set' article as fact - is that 'Barnyard' was at one point a part of 'Heroes and Villians'. The rest of your statement, AGAIN, is pure supposition.

To conclude with one more quotation - complete with dating and attribution - I am fairly confident you will bother to read and retain:

CASE FUC|<ING CLOSED.

[Mujan, 8@$+@Rc| of a Blue Wizard, posted Today]

after the orchestra 'pit' reference, the 'drawn' brings my mind to the stage curtains being drawn.
Eta - this is meant as an addition, not a counter, to your very nice collection of references.

Excellent observation, Emily! Thank you.

Hey GhostyTMRS, thanks for your response. As a matter of fact, I was feeling pretty guilty about the post you're replying to - as a freelance writer and former journalist, I fear that my frequent experience of being called 'pretentious' for using multi-syllabic words triggered a kneejerk reaction when reading your perfectly reasonable post. In short: I think I was probably something of a prick in writing it, and I apologise.

I know I'll get a lot of flak for this from 90% of the people here, but my main problem is with the lyric to "Surf's Up" (and to a lesser degree some of "Heroes and Villains"). Namechecking Poe's "The Pit and The Pendulum" has always struck me as ham-fisted and some of the others seem too precious for their own good like "Dove nested towers, the hours..", etc.

I kinda agree with you here, actually. In some cases, though, I believe that VDP's wordplay isn't so much pretentious (ie. flowery to conceal an actual lack of interest) or ham-fisted as willfully obscure. My understanding of 'The pit and the pendulum drawn' is that it's a three-way piece of wordplay: The context is a 'man at a concert' (Wilson in Spiegel) - when 'back through the opera glass [he] see[ s ] the Pit and the Pendulum drawn' - this being both a period-setting allusion to Poe and a literal reference to the 'theatre pit' in which the orchestra plays, and the 'pendulum' of a clock, ticking away the passage of time - one of the core subject matters of the song.

(It can also be noted that one can draw a pendulum back and forth - and 'drawn' also provides a thematic rhyme with the battles ('the drawing of weapons') alluded to later in the song.)

For example, I'm a sucker for Dylan and "Vision of Johanna" is my favorite song and lyric. "The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face" is a line that's usually called out as either sublime or pretentious nonsense. For some reason, that line and the entire song work for me, but I can see where someone could think it's pretentious

Absolutely. I think 'Visions' - music, lyrics, performance - may well be the most perfect piece of pop music ever put to tape. (Is such a statement allowed on a Beach Boys forum? )

(and yes, I DO know what the word "pretentious" means....good grief).

Again, a very genuine apology for what I wrote above.

Still, Bruce differs pretty significantly from other witnesses in completely ignoring the band's internal tension (expected) and calling Brian constantly nervous at this time while Vosse and Anderle present a very childlike carefree (tho still dealing with a lot of tension and insecurity) creative spirit.

Not disagreeing with any of this, really, except to point out that a major aspect of 'Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!' (another of the 'seminal texts') concerns Brian's increasing doubts and paranoia during the SMiLE period - cf. the 'magic fire music'; Phil Spector producing the film 'Seconds' just to mess with him, etc. So there is at least one other 'major witness' who perceived - and wrote about - Brian's 'nervous' mental state at the time.

Thanks, AGD -

(btw, if the dating on the first quote is accurate, the only known "H&V" vocal session that could, at a stretch, be thought of as "early" was 12/13 at Columbia)

I'm taking it there's at least one H&V vocal session logged for '66, then? C-man's excellent TSS sessionography is slightly unclear on the subject.

On the subject of the dating in the Teen Set article, I was slightly surprised to discover how accurate it appears to be, if you cross reference the months/days given for various events with the recorded chronology. Even the fact the 'Surf's Up First Movement'/'Humble Harv' meeting/Chants episode did indeed take place on a Friday (November 4).

The only major dating confusion I can see in the two Vosse pieces regards Workshop/Barnyard - which he recalls in 'Fusion' as developing directly from the past tense 'You Are My Sunshine' (including the animal noises/power tool effects etc) but were in fact taped over three weeks before OMP/YAMS, in the case of 'Barnyard', and a good two weeks later in the case of 'Workshop'. Not that the difference of a fortnight is necessarily all that important, especially considering the interview was published a good three years later, but possibly worth noting. Otherwise almost all the dates and information provided in the two Vosse pieces (of those, of course, which can be verified historically) do indeed seem to check out.

No problem, Mujan! Glad you appreciated it. I think your post above is fine - am glad I got to post the last three installments in sequence, but now they're up I'm quite happy to let the thread become whatever it becomes.

EDIT: On a related note, I put together all these collations as one word doc, so if anyone wants a copy of that (just to have all the quotes in one place) fire me a PM and I'm happy to send it through.

[‘PSYCODELIC SOUNDS’]

Last one, I think. Please note that a couple of additions to my posts above been made since their original posting (to 'Heroes and Villians', 'Surf's Up' and 'The Old Master Painter). If anyone has noticed any omissions, please PM me with the reference and I'll add it to the original posts.

*************

‘PSYCODELIC SOUNDS’

Water Sounds ('Bob Gordon's Real Trip'):
‘Now I had for a year—knowing nothing really about making records—been convinced that ... I don't know, I heard some record with water on it, and it wasn't even a very good record—but water really sounds nice when you listen to it clearly. And I was talking to Brian one day about water sounds on records—he and Van Dyke had both decided the album would have quite a bit of sound effects on it—and Brian had a list of things he did not want off sound effects records: he wanted us to get the real thing. That was really my first assignment for the record and he got me a Nagra - he didn't mess around, man, I had the whole thing - I didn't even know how to work one. And a list from Brian, and a stack like this of tapes; and off I went to get these sounds. And in the process of doing that we talked more and more about water. At first, Brian said he wanted to do a water album, so what we finally got it down to was that Brian and I collected, for a week, together, every kind of water sound we could: we like spent a whole evening in some chick's kitchen because she had a metal sink; and boiling water and toilets-went out to streams, went out to the ocean, went to water fountains - everywhere, man - garden hoses: one night we were up at three o'clock in the morning rolling pebbles down the street in front of his house because there was water in the streets — he was hearing all that; and when we got through, he listened to those tapes, and he told me, and I'm sure it was true, that he could sit down and edit those tapes and find the notes and construct a song so that all of it would come from the sounds of the water: he would do nothing to it except edit it, 'cause he said within that range of what we had recorded were all the notes in all the musical scales—the water has all that kind of varying pitch.

And that never got done.’
[Fusion, 1969]

Cab Driver Monologue (‘Taxi Cabber’):
‘O'Hare International Airport, Chicago, Illinois — It is one in the morning on a chilly, windy October night. Brian Wilson and an associate get off a jet flight from Los Angeles on their way to meet The Beach Boys on tour in Michigan. This is the group's final concert before leaving for the now legendary visit to Europe, and Brian is going to run through one final work rehearsal to polish up the new songs which have been added to the concert repertory. A cabbie, during the short drive to nearby O'Hare Inn, tries to explain the intricate and confusing set of boundaries which surround and join the airport grounds. The monologue was Pinter-Beckett with a touch of Chester Riley: Brian gets every second of it on his portable tape recorder which was hidden under a huge pea coat. Safely inside of his hotel room Wilson listens to the cabbie's recorded voice over and over again, clapping his hands and laughing loudly. "Now, THAT is humor. There is so much pretense and defensiveness in recorded comedy today. This man is truly, humbly funny. I want to take this sort of approach to a humorous record, maybe a radio show." Does he ever stop working? No.’
[Teen Set, Jan ‘67 - describing events of 20/21st October 1966, when Brian travelled to Michigan to help the band rehearse for the first live performance of ‘Good Vibrations’ at the University of Michigan on October 22nd.]

‘DAVID: I think what Brian tried to do with Smiley Smile is he tried to salvage as much of Smile as he could and at the same time immediately go into his humor album. 'Cause it's so—I hear elements in that of our discussions about the humor album, just little pieces of it.’
[Crawdaddy! Pt II - May 1968]

The Chants:
‘Now it is late and time for fun. Brian and four friends sit in the darkened studio around an open microphone. Each person makes and repeats a sound which represents the “feeling" of underwater life to him ... Brian softly whispers into ears asking for a variation here, a more pronounced rhythm there, soon the effect is created and Brian returns to the booth to mix the sounds with echoes and pitch changes to create a vocal Atlantis. “This is an interesting direction. When the guys get back we'll try something similar.”’
[Teen Set ‘67, describing events of 4th November 1966]

‘DAVID: One of the really, uh, the uniquely beautiful things about Brian was that he never had one idea that I can remember that was simple. He never had one idea that made sense. Everything was new. Every single idea he would say had no foundation anywhere, except for his head. This is how he got into, for instance, the chanting: one night we were at the studio, and Brian didn't feel like putting down a track. We were just laying around, and he said, "Come out here, everyone." So we all went out there, not one of us a professional, and he had us making animal noises, incredible noises, directing us from the control room: "Louder." "Softer." "More expansive." "Get in closer." The whole thing. We started off very conscious of what we were doing, looking at each other and very embarrassed, and then he just drove us into it, totally. We went into the studio and listened to it; he put it with music, we listened to it again and walked out knowing that once again Brian had done it. This was a daily routine. To have your mind blown by something Brian was coming up with.’
[Crawdaddy! Pt I - March-April 1968]

[VEGA-TABLES]

Part Four, finishing up the songs included on the Capitol Tracklist. 'Psycodelic Sounds' to follow.

************************

VEGA-TABLES

‘Brian Wilson and master percussionist Hal Blaine meet eyeball to eyeball for a deadly game of pool. Blaine picks up his celery stalk, Wilson has his and with oh-so-careful english spins the radish off the tomato for game. Guy Webster is clicking off color photos nearby. "I want people to turn on to vegetables, good natural food, organic food. Health is an important ingredient in spiritual enlightenment. But I do not want to be pompous about this, so we will engage in a satirical approach to the matter."

Brian and Van Dyke Parks, his collaborator for the Smile album, write 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.’
[Teen Set, Jan ‘67]

‘DAVID: Um . . . "Vege-tables."
PAUL: How was that going to be?
DAVID: Not like it is on the album. It's on Smiley Smile, it was changed quite a bit. See, all that stuff was changed, because Brian ... none of the tracks are on Smiley Smile. Some of the songs are there, but he's recorded them in the house.’
[Crawdaddy! Pt II, May 1968]

‘"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 …’
[Fusion, 1969]


THE OLD MASTER PAINTER

'It is a crisp, clear November night, and from Brian Wilson's living room, high atop Beverly Hills, the city glistens in patterns of light. Wilson sits at his piano. Jules Siegel, Saturday Evening Post’s top music journalist, lies on the floor playing catch with Banana, the Wilson beagle. Banana is indefatigable. Siegel has been throwing the ball for twenty minutes. His arm is tired. Banana could go on all night.

Wilson turns to no one in particular and speaks. "'You Are My Sunshine' can happen another way. Listen." He plays a mournful series of chord patterns while singing a sad revision of the song "You were my sunshine, my only sunshine ..." The next night he is back at Goldstar and a studio full of cellos, strings, and percussion performing those same poignant chords. There is no sheet music. There hasn't been time for that. Brian is doing the arrangement on the spot. He prefers to work that way — like Fellini on the set with no script, scurrying about whispering snatches of dialogue into his players' ears.'
[Teen Set, Jan ‘67 - apparently describing the events of 13 and 14 November, 1966]

‘Vosse: And like I said, Brian loves Stephen Foster ... that kind of song. So one night we were over at his house and he started playing "You Are My Sunshine" by ... Who wrote that?
Interviewer: Jimmy Davis, ex-Gov. of Louisiana.
Vosse: I used to go to high school with his son. Well, Brian started playing it slowly—almost like an R&B thing— just slowing down the tempo: really mournful. And we were all a little high, I guess, that night ... and he started doing a "you were my sunshine" thing: he put the song in the past tune—and he was trying to find his bass rhythm for it: and in doing that he found this weird little riff that just sort of developed. And it hit him, man, right then that he wanted a barn yard—he wanted Old MacDonald's farm—he wanted all that stuff. So he immediately got Van Dyke over and they did a chart for "You were my sunshine," which ... It's so hard to remember exactly what he wound up doing because he changed things so much ... he wound up writing a clarinet part for it which is impossible to describe: a whole different sound that he found in the middle of all this ... and it developed into an instrumental thing with barnyard sounds—people sawing—he had people in the studio sawing on wood—and Van Dyke being a duck—and it was marvelous. It made you smile and at the same time touched you.’
[Fusion, 1969]

'"HERE WE GO!" The voice booms over the intercom system and the men spring into action. Saws chew up boards, nails are driven with hammers — the workshop is alive with sounds. In the control room at Goldstar Recording studios in Hollywood, Brian Wilson sits at the board chuckling. “Do you believe it!" He slams his hand down on the arm of the chair. They believe it.

Brian Wilson is cutting an album. He wants the sounds of a workshop for background on one of the tracks. David Oppenheim, Emmy award winning producer of CBS documentaries on Igor Stravinsky and Pablo Casals, sits watching and listening. He believes it. Moments later he is out in the studio, tools in hand, banging and sawing away with the veteran studio musicians.'
[Teen Set '67, describing the events of 29th November 1966]


PRAYER

'Like medieval choirboys, the voices of the Beach Boys pealed out in wordless prayer from the last acetate, thirty seconds of chorale that reached upward to the vaulted stone ceilings of an empty cathedral lit by thousands of tiny votive candles melting at last into one small, pure pool that whispered a universal amen in a sigh without words.'
[Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!, 1967]

‘On the last word Brian's voice rose and fell, like the ending of that prayer chorale he had played so many months before.’
[Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!, 1967 - describing the end of the solo version of ‘Surf’s Up’]

[WONDERFUL]

Part Three:

WONDERFUL

‘Most of these Smile songs got to almost their final stage of recording - some of them were done, and then changed: like on Smiley Smile - a song called "Wonderful." They became self-conscious and made it into a joke. But the original version of it was so beautiful: Brian met Stephen Foster in that song, which is what he always wanted - that sentimentality ...only getting by with it...by being very straight with it.’
[Fusion, 1969]


I’M IN GREAT SHAPE

[this title, perhaps unsurprisingly, is not mentioned in any of the period articles. As I’m trying to resist editorialising in this collation, therefore, references to sundry pieces such as ‘Barnyard’ and ‘Workshop’ will be included under the listing of the named song in context of which such discussion occurs.]


CHILD IS FATHER OF THE MAN

‘I got a sneak preview of one of the tracks the previous night, when Dennis Wilson played me a piano version of one track, “Child of the Man” [sic], a cowboy song, and then gave me the throwaway line of the year - “And this is a prayer I’m working on for it!”
[UK newspaper, late ‘66 - if anyone can provide an attribution, I’ll edit the post accordingly]

‘DAVID: Let's see, what else is there…
PAUL: "The Child is the Father of the Man."
DAVID: Which I understand will be on his next album. I just heard that from someone, I don't remember who told me....’
[Crawdaddy! Pt II, May 1968 - this probably refers to the musical quotation from this song in Dennis' 'Little Bird', released later in '68 on the album 'Friends']


THE ELEMENTS

‘PAUL: Let's try to remember the tracks. "The Elements.". .
DAVID: Okay. Smile was going to be the culmination of all of Brian's intellectual occupations; and he was really into the elements. He ran up to Big Sur for a week, just 'cause he wanted to get into that, up to the mountains, into the snow, down to the beach, out to the pool, out at night, running around, to water fountains, to a lot of water, the sky, the whole thing was this fantastic amount of awareness of his surroundings. So the obvious thing was to do something that would cover the physical surroundings. 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. That was where it stopped. None of us had any ideas as to how it was going to tie together, except that it appeared to us to be an opera. And the story of the fire part I guess is pretty well known by now.
PAUL: There's a lot of confusion about it.
DAVID: Well, briefly, Brian created a track for the fire part which was the most revolutionary sound I've ever heard. He actually created a fire, a forest fire, with instruments, no sound effects—a lot of strings, and a lot of technique on the board—when you would listen to that thing, it would actually, it would scare you, you would be scared listening to that. It was so overpowering . . .
[Crawdaddy! Pt II, May 1968]

‘It was just another day of greatness at Gold Star Recording Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. [...] Walking into the control room [...] was Brian Wilson himself, wearing a competition-stripe surfer's T-shirt, tight white duck pants, pale green bowling shoes and a red plastic fireman's helmet. Everybody was wearing identical red plastic toy fireman's helmets. Brian's cousin and production assistant, Steve Korthoff was wearing one; his wife, Marilyn, and her sister, Diane Rovelle—Brian's secretary—were also wearing them, and so was a once dignified writer from The Saturday Evening Post who had been following Brian around for two months.

Out in the studio, the musicians for the session were unpacking their instruments. [...] "Steve," Brian called out, "where are the rest of those fire hats? I want everybody to wear fire hats. We've really got to get into this thing." Out to the Rolls-Royce went Steve and within a few minutes all of the musicians were wearing fire hats, silly grins beginning to crack their professional dignity.

"All right, let's go," said Brian. Then, using a variety of techniques ranging from vocal demonstration to actually playing the instruments, he taught each musician his part. A gigantic fire howled out of the massive studio speakers in a pounding crash of pictorial music that summoned up visions of roaring, windstorm flames, falling timbers, mournful sirens and sweating firemen, building into a peak and crackling off into fading embers as a single drum turned into a collapsing wall and the fire-engine cellos dissolved and disappeared.

"When did he write this?" asked an astonished pop music producer who had wandered into the studio.

"This is really fantastic! Man, this is unbelievable! How long has he been working on it?"

"About an hour," answered one of Brian's friends.

"I don't believe it. I just can't believe what I'm hearing," said the producer and fell into a stone glazed silence as the fire music began again.

For the next three hours, Brian Wilson recorded and re-recorded, take after take, changing the sound balance, adding echo, experimenting with a sound effects track of a real fire. "Let me hear that again." "Drums, I think you're a little slow in that last part. Let's get right on it." "That was really good. Now, one more time, the whole thing." "All right, let me hear the cellos alone." "Great. Really great. Now let's do it!"

With 23 takes on tape and the entire operation responding to his touch like the black knobs on the control board, sweat glistening down his long, reddish hair onto his freckled face, the control room a litter of dead cigarette butts, Chicken Delight boxes, crumpled napkins, Coke bottles and all the accumulated trash of the physical end of the creative process, Brian stood at the board as the four speakers blasted the music into the room. For the 24th time, the drum crashed and the sound effects crackle faded and stopped.

"Thank you," said Brian into the control room mic. "Let me hear that back." Feet shifting, his body still, eyes closed, head moving seal-like to his music, he stood under the speakers and listened.

"Let me hear that one more time." Again the fire roared.

"Everybody come out and listen to this," Brian said to the musicians. They came into the room and listened to what they had made. "What do you think?" Brian asked.

"It's incredible, incredible," whispered one of the musicians, a man in his fifties wearing a Hawaiian shirt and iridescent trousers and pointed black Italian shoes. "Absolutely incredible."

"Yeah," said Brian on the way home, an acetate trial copy or "dub" of the tape in his hands, the red plastic fire helmet still on his head. "Yeah, I'm going to call this 'Mrs. O'Leary's Fire' and I think it might just scare a whole lot of people."'
[Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!, 1967, describing the events of 28th November 1966]

‘DAVID: … and then there was a rash of fires in the city, and Brian became aware of this rash of fires, and then there was the fire across the street from the studio.... Brian's not superstitious, he's something that I can't name, 'cause I totally do not understand what it is, but he had a series of dialogs with me where at one point he asked if I would check the fire department, call the city fire department or whoever it was that I would have to call, to find out if there were more fires within this period in Los Angeles than in any other period in history. Because he really felt, I guess, the word is vibrations. Brian is very into vibrations, and made me, to this day, very aware of vibrations.'
[Crawdaddy! Pt II, May 1968]

‘As it turns out, however, Brian Wilson's magic fire music is not going to scare anybody—because nobody other than the few people who heard it in the studio will ever get to listen to it. A few days after the record was finished, a building across the street from the studio burned down and, according to Brian, there was also an unusually large number of fires in Los Angeles. Afraid that his music might in fact turn out to be magic fire music, Wilson destroyed the master. "I don't have to do a big scary fire like that," he later said. "I can do a candle and it's still a fire. That would have been a really bad vibration to let out on the world, that Chicago fire. The next one is going to be a candle." '
[Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!, 1967]

‘That's when several things contributed to what I would call Brian's growing uncertainty about whether or not he could fulfill this project: Smile. The first uncertainty, was whether or not the group could cut it. While they were in England, Brian cut the tracks - and the tracks were just brilliant. I mean, you would have loved them. For example, he was doing a four part suite called "The Elements," and the fire section of it was all done with percussion instruments. It was like Stravinsky. It was beautifully done, and lasted about two minutes...You've heard all about that thing, with the tape and the fire destroying it...Well, that happened, but it doesn't mean anything.’
[Fusion, 1969]

‘DAVID: Anyway, after we all laughed at him, as we normally did in these situations, he went ahead and destroyed the tape. Completely. Eliminated it, never to be heard again. That basically destroyed "Elements."
PAUL: Was this the first break in Smile, the first turn downward?
DAVID: Yeah. That was the first sign that we were going to have problems on this album.’
[Crawdaddy! Pt II, May 1968]

[SURF’S UP]

Many thanks for the kind words! Here's the next three tracks (pretty straightforward so far, but I can't help but be aware 'I'm in Great Shape' and 'The Elements' are coming up shortly...)

**************

SURF’S UP

‘But they played me another thing [on Vosse’s first night at Brian’s house] called "Surf's Up," and...it's a masterpiece, and if it is not released -- it's a crime, because it was so brilliant, man: it was the full circle - Brian Wilson looking all the way into himself and his audience...and calling it "Surfs Up" - obviously bringing up those connotations - doing a song which had the same sort of aura or approach to imagery as a film like Marienbad: sort of disjointed time, baroque images…’
[Fusion, 1969]

‘"Surf's Up," which is a masterpiece, unbelievable . . . that was the one song, "Surf's Up" was the one perfect blending of Van Dyke and Brian. Absolute perfection. One of the most important songs I've ever heard in my life. I don't know if it will ever be out.’
[Crawdaddy! Pt II, May 1968]

'As to Smile itself—well, you know about "Surf’s Up." It was going to kind of close the album, and then after it was over they were going to a sort of choral, a-men sort of thing.'
[Fusion, 1969]

‘Back at Western Recorders on a Friday night. The Beach Boys are receiving heroes' greetings in England, and Brian is busy in the studio taking musicians through another of his track sessions. A few dozen takes see many changes and embellishments come to the piece. Finally Brian is satisfied with a take and sends the men home with warm thanks and encouragement.'
[Teen Set, Jan '67 - describing the 'Surf's Up: 1st Movement' session of Friday November 4th 1966 (see 'Psycodelic Sounds' below)]

‘It is another night at Goldstar. A group of older musicians whom Brian has never met are there to perform on French horns. Five minutes after producer meets players, the men are creating laughing effects and having conversation with their horns. "It was just an idea I had, and I'm happy to see it works." How does he do it? Somebody standing in the hallway asks.'
[Teen Set, Jan ‘67 - describing the ‘Surf’s Up: Talking Horns’ session of Nov 7th, also known as ‘George Fell Into His French Horn’.)

‘Now we're into about the end of November (still '66), and at that point a very important thing happened to help the situation: David Oppenheim came out to do that special; and when he came up to Brian's house, I think he turned Brian on to what he (Brian) was doing by receiving it so well. And Brian was a bit in awe of the man, because he'd just done this special on Casais, and Stravinsky. And Brian ordered them screened; we got the 16 mm. print and Brian loved them. And he knew that the man used to be the head of the classical record division at Columbia: no one from that world had ever talked with him before; and he began to think maybe I am doing the right thing if these people understand it.

And so we did that show in the house where he sang "Surf's Up."

Brian is the most shy person in the world about performing, so you can imagine what a good job Oppenheim did on his head to get him ready.’
[Fusion, 1969]

‘And there is also a spectacular peak, a song called "Surf s Up" that Brian recorded for the first time in December in Columbia Records Studio A for a CBS TV pop music documentary. Earlier in the evening the film crew had covered a Beach Boys vocal session that had gone very badly. Now, at midnight, the Beach Boys had gone home and Brian was sitting in the back of his car, smoking a joint. [...]

“OK, let's go," he said, and then, quickly, he was in the studio rehearsing, spotlighted in the center of the huge dark room, the cameramen moving about him invisibly outside the light. "Let's do it," he announced, and the tape began to roll. In the control room no one moved.

David Oppenheim, the TV producer, fortyish, handsome, usually studiously detached and professional, lay on the floor, hands behind his head, eyes closed. For three minutes and 27 seconds, Wilson played with delicate intensity, speaking moodily through the piano. Then he was finished. Oppenheim, whose last documentary had been a study of Stravinsky, lay motionless.

"That's it," Wilson said as the tape continued to whirl. The mood broke. As if awakening from heavy sleep the people stirred and shook their heads. "I'd like to hear that," Wilson said. As his music replayed, he sang the lyrics in a high, almost falsetto voice, the cameras on him every second.

"The diamond necklace played the pawn," Wilson sang. "A blind class aristocracy, back through the opera glass you see the pit and the pendulum drawn.

"Columnated ruins domino," his voice reached upward; the piano faltered a set of falling chords. In a slow series of impressionistic images the song moved to its ending: I heard the word: Wonderful thing! A children's song!

On the last word Brian's voice rose and fell, like the ending of that prayer chorale he had played so many months before.

"That's really special," someone said.

"Special, that's right," said Wilson quietly. "Van Dyke and I really kind of thought we had done something special when we finished that one."

He went back into the studio, put on the earphones and sang the song again for his audience in the control room, for the revolving tape recorder and for the cameras that relentlessly followed as he struggled to make manifest what still only existed as a perfect, incommunicable sound in his head. [...]

At home, as the black acetate dub turned on his bedroom hi-fi set, Wilson tried to explain the words. "It's a man at a concert," he said. "All around him there's the audience, playing their roles, dressed up in fancy clothes, looking through opera glasses, but so far away from the drama, from life — Back through the opera glass you see the pit and the pendulum drawn.'

"The music begins to take over. 'Columnated ruins domino.' Empires, ideas, lives, institutions—everything has to fall, tumbling like dominoes.

"He begins to awaken to the music; sees the pretentiousness of everything. `The music hall a costly bow.' Then even the music is gone, turned into a trumpeter swan, into what the music really is. Canvas the town and brush the backdrop. He’s off in his vision, on a trip. Reality is gone; he’s creating it like a dream.

"Dove-nested towers. Europe, a long time ago. The laughs come hard in Auld Lang Syne. The poor people in the cellar taverns, trying to make themselves happy by singing. Then there’s the parties, the drinking, trying to forget the wars, the battles at sea. While at port a do or die. Ships in the harbor, battling it out. A kind of Roman empire thing. A choke of grief. At his own sorrow and the emptiness of his life. because he can’t even cry for the suffering in the world, for his own suffering. And then, hope. Surf’s up! … Come about hard and join the once and often spring you gave. Go back to the kids, to the beach, to childhood. I heard the word of God; Wonderful thing; the joy of enlightenment, of seeing God. And what is it? 'A children's song!' And then there's the song itself, the song of children, the song of the universe rising and falling in wave after wave, the song of God, hiding the love from us, but always letting us find it again, like a mother singing to her children."

The record was over. Wilson went into the kitchen and squirted Reddi-wip direct from the can into his mouth, made himself a chocolate Great Shake, and ate a couple of candy bars.

"Of course that's a very intellectual explanation," he said. "But maybe sometimes you have to do an intellectual thing. If they don't get the words, they’ll get the music. You can get too hung up on words, you know. Maybe they work; I don’t know.” He fidgeted with a telescope.’
[Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!, 1967, describing events of Dec 15 ‘66. The ‘Beach Boys vocal session that had gone very badly’ refers to that of 7-10pm the same evening, at which both the backing vocals for ‘Wonderful’, as heard on TSS, and now lost vocals for ‘Surf’s Up’ itself were taped.]


GOOD VIBRATIONS

‘A short time after his LSD experience, Wilson began work on the record that was to establish him right along with the Beatles as one of the most important innovators in modern popular music. It was called "Good Vibrations," and it took more than six months, 90 hours of tape and complete versions before a three-minute-and-thirty-five-second final master tape satisfied him. Among the instruments on "Good Vibrations" was an electronic device called a theremin, which had its debut in the soundtrack of the movie Spellbound, back in the forties. To some people, "Good Vibrations" was considerably crazier than Gregory Peck had been in the movie, but to others Brian Wilson's new record, along with his somewhat earlier LP release Pet Sounds, marked the beginning of a new era in pop music.’
[Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!, 1967]

‘DAVID: When I really got in with Brian was right around the time of the fourth final "Good Vibrations." I heard it, and it knocked me out, and I said, uh oh, there's something happening here that is unbelievable. And then, the next time I came up, it was different. And then I came up one evening, and Brian… informed me at that time that he had decided to totally scrap "Good Vibrations." He was not going to put it out. The track was going to be sold to Warner Brothers to be put out as an r&b song, sung by a colored group. Brian has always had a feeling for r&b, very heavy feeling for r&b. [...] I called Brian back the next day and I proposed, made a proposal to him, which I don't personally think caused him to decide to finish, but maybe he... it gave him a different perspective. Anyway, he went ahead and he finished it.
PAUL: What was the nature of the earlier "Good Vibrations"?
DAVID: It was a lot shorter, it was a lot tighter rhythmically, melodically it was a lot simpler than the final song. It was much more a commercial ditty, if that's possible. There were no lyrics at that time, that he had recorded; he had just recorded tracks. Brian goes in and cuts all the tracks first. He is motivated by the music, generally; the music will then motivate the lyric, and a lot of times the lyric comes very late. Brian is totally musical. Obviously he's not lyrical. Brian has written some of the worst lyrics in history. Although you shouldn't say "worst" lyrics, but some of the simplest lyrics. His lyrics have never been on the par that his music has been on, ever. He really has a musical head.’
[Crawdaddy! Pt I, April-March 1968]

‘Anyway, we went over to Brian Wilson's house one night for dinner: David Anderle and his wife, and me and a chick, and Van Dyke and his wife, and a guy from the Saturday Evening Post named Jules Segal - very obnoxious writer. We all had dinner, and then listened to "Good Vibrations" which was not yet out: I had never heard it. And it was just too beautiful - what a beautifully structured thing: and we just listened to it a few times.’
[Fusion, 1969]

‘Ah ... he was forced to put "Good Vibrations" on [to SMiLE], something he never wanted to do is put a single onto the album, but he was forced to do that For sales. That was another, I'm sure, a minor tragedy for him.’
[Crawdaddy! Pt II, May 1968]

‘Well, I can quote Murray Wilson (Brian's father and publisher) one night sitting down with me and astounding me, telling me what a horrible mistake it had been for Brian to put out "Good Vibrations" - because, he said, Brian's going to lose his whole audience: those kids don't want to hear that; the Boys have got to go back to what they were doing. So that became the big argument: Are we gonna' lose our image or we are gonna’ start a new one…’
[Fusion, 1969]

‘"They've Found the New Sound at Last!" shrieked the headline over a London Sunday Express review as "Good Vibrations" hit the English charts at number six and leaped to number one the following week. Within a few weeks, the Beach Boys had pushed the Beatles out of first place in England's New Musical Express' annual poll. In America, "Good Vibrations" sold nearly 400,000 copies in four days before reaching number one several weeks later and earning a gold record within another month when it hit the one-million sales mark.’
[Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!, 1967]


CABIN ESSENCE

‘And then Van and Brian played us two things they were doing on the album: one was...ah, part of the thing that turned into "Cabinessence." This was originally part of "Who Ran the Iron Horse," which was about this Chinese cat working on the railroad; it had the "crow" line in it. And another song, "Bicycle Rider," was to be integrated with it: they thought they'd put together these two separate songs… A lot of that kind of thing was going on: I mean, there are fragments of maybe five different songs combined in each of the songs as they stand now. "Cabinessence," for example, started out as a wholly different trip - Dennis was going to sing it by himself and sound like a funky cat up in the mountains somewhere singing to a chick by a fireplace: very simple - and that's all there was to it.’
[Fusion, 1969]

‘The recording of it on 20/20 is new, because before his ear operation about a year ago, Brian could not hear in stereo.

In the original, "Who Ran the Iron Horse," he had a very definite visual image in mind of a train in motion, and suddenly he stopped in the middle of the song with the "Grand Coolie" refrain. Back then, there was no voice track on it: I mean, he cut the whole instrumental track— it was mixed and done—and he brought it in and played it for me . . . and I didn't know what it was supposed to be. I definitely felt the railroad presence, I definitely felt the west present, I definitely felt the cowboy and Indian thing—but there was this strange oriental thing going on in the middle of it; and I asked him what it was ... and he said: "Uhm . . . This song's about the railroads . . . and I wondered what the perspective was of the guy who drove the spike . . . those Chinese lobormen working on the railroad . . . like they'd be hitting the thing . . . but looking off, too, and kind of noticing a crow flying overhead . . . the Oriental mind going on a different track . .."’
[Fusion, 1969]