This is me commentating on Domenic Priore's second, far less famous, SMiLE book from 2005.
https://archive.org/details/smilestoryofbria0000prio/page/9/mode/1up?view=theater I'm gonna go chapter by chapter and share my thoughts on SMiLE stuff.
Key Takeaways: 1. Thoughts on Brian's Foreword
It's really wild to hear Brian describe "[the time of composing] the music of SMiLE [as] a very special and energetic and upbeat time in my career and life." He also calls it "a very uplifting, jovial album." I think certainly the 2003-04 version is more jolly and triumphant than its inspiration, but those original sessions I find straight up haunting and bittersweet at best. Extremely beautiful in their sad tortured genius, like the music of the Ainur in Tolkien, something melancholy, like life itself, but that's the appeal of it. It makes me think of the tremendous regret in our past and little tragedies going on everyday (Wonderful, the uncertain future of CIFOTM) with only the faintest promise of a better tomorrow at the very end to leave the listener with just enough hope to carry on. As I've frequently stated, the only two tracks that seem "jovial" to me are Veggies and H&V to a noticeably lesser extent (the lyrics betray the upbeat melody). It is great to hear Brian so positive about it, of course.
The rest of what Brian says isn't particularly insightful, which is disappointing but not unsurprising. ("Pay attention to the words in the chorus: Heroes and Villains, just see what you've done..." uhh, thanks Bri, will do.) He just says the most basic possible description of each song ("[regarding YAMS] listen to how unhappy the lyrics are and how sad it is for the guy to lose the person he loved, his sunshine," as if that isn't the first thing anyone would notice). He's just not a verbose guy, nor one to reveal his secrets. That's why, despite being the epicenter of the whole thing, I find him one of the worst sources for information about SMiLE.
One illuminating factoid is that, supposedly, they only recorded "the cello part" of OMP because Brian couldn't remember the whole song when it was originally recorded. Another interesting tidbit is how he refers to SMiLE as "teenage
rock opera to God" rather than "symphony" mirroring what he said in Ear Candy ("we added a third movement, now it's a rock opera") implying that wasn't a throwaway comment but what he thinks SMiLE ultimately is now.
2. Thoughts on VDP's Foreword
I notice he can't help but milk that "GV cello" anecdote for everything its worth, calling it "the signature shot of the piece" like the ruby slippers in
Oz. He even takes a quick drive-by swipe at Mike, implying there may've still been hurt feelings twenty years ago (or even to the present day). I'd say the theremin is the "ruby slippers" of GV if any one piece is, or even Mike's hook in stark irony to all the obsessive tinkering Brian did over 7 months of work, but let Van have his moment, I guess. It was genuinely a good idea.
Beyond that, frustratingly, VDP has little else to say of the album as a whole, of its genesis or what he feels of the work as a whole. I understand that Brian is Brian, but I can't help but be a little annoyed when VDP continuously gives us the slip. I feel like he could say so much more than he does but then he chooses to focus on the same "I came up with the cellos in GV" anecdote, or pass on writing an essay for the 2011 booklet. (Yeah he was sticking up for Frank Holmes, but it still screwed over the consumer.) Tell us at least what working concepts you had in mind for CIFOTM man, or if you wrote anything for I Ran (as opposed to the vocal sessions comprising of vocalizations and scat).
3. Thoughts on Part 1
I admit I'm mostly skimming the pre-SMiLE chapters (my area of interest is hyper-focused and I have a lot of other writing projects that Brian's unexpected passing has been distracting me from, so cut me a bit of slack on this, please). Probably the biggest revelation here is that the Beach Boys were in talks to make a film with "American International Pictures" called
Beach Boys Hawaiian Style. I'd like to read more about this rabbit hole later, but offhand I'm skeptical it would've been as good as the Beatles' movies. Even just going by the prospective title, it feels like the band was too shoehorned by their name to make anything more interesting than "isn't the beach fun?!" and when I read that AIP wanted the music rights... call me crazy but I'm on Murry's side. Doesn't sound like a very good deal to me. I don't know if any of the guys sans Brian and Dennis would've fan the same charisma or witticisms that the Beatles did in
A Hard Days Night.The paragraphs about the Byrds' influence to the Beatles (and therefore, everyone else, Brian included) were pretty illuminating. Most histories of the '64-'66 years play up the friendly rivalry between the BBs and Moptops in a vacuum, maybe with Bob Dylan thrown in there somewhere, while the rest of the emerging counter-culture scene are often overlooked until Monterey. (And then it's just about how Hendrix said "you'll never hear surf music again" and that's it.)
The impressive list of BB songs that have been used to close movies is something I never thought about before. The only one of these I was familiar with was
American Graffiti.The
Pet Sounds section isn't particularly impressive, especially coming off the other sources I've seen recently (plus the Charles Granata book about 14 years ago). It feels a bit like going through the motions, but the main point Priore drills into the reader's head is that Brian did almost everything, save singing 8 vocal parts. This was Brian's ride.
4. Thoughts on "Brian Wilson Meets Van Dyke Parks"
I think Priore's opening line here ("[...] Brian Wilson finally met a collaborator who gave back to his music as much as Brian himself was putting out") may be doing Tony Asher and perhaps even Mike Love dirty. Assuming no harm was intended, I think a more accurate way to put it is "finally Brian had met a cowriter as well-versed in music composition as himself, with as much of an artistic ambition and knowledge of the hip scene." It's not that Asher & Love couldn't or didn't pitch musical ideas, much less give their blood, sweat and tears to see Brian's vision realized, just that VDP was an independent recording artist, and therefore Brian's equal in a way the other two were not.
Van says the words "...that's what I was, as far as I was concerned; I assisted him in what he chose to do." That feels pretty significant. So does "[H&V was] the first one we finished," and "we did that in one day. The next thing we worked on was 'SU, and then came 'Wonderful' , 'CE' and the rest." These four, the ones Brian would recall specifically writing in the sandbox in
Beautiful Dreamer, seem particularly significant. I don't think either man has talked about when or how they wrote any other specific track (except Wind Chimes, but I believe it was Marilyn who described the shopping trip inspiration). Also, if Heroes was "finished" that implies what, the regular verses and maybe some kinda chorus? And then it mutated into whatever random cowboy skit or half-realized western theme Brian could come up with for the next year?
Van also says it was a GV session he attended first, and here he suggests the cello triplets--he makes it sound like this came after their first writing session(s). In Van's telling, the cello suggestion is when he really "proved" himself to Brian, when they realized they were on each other's level musically, that they both understood production.
I'm very appreciative of the fact that Priore spends so much time on providing context of the music scene as it was progressing rapidly, connecting how all these acts (the Byrds, Bob Dylan, Curt Boettcher, Love, the Rat Pack, even one I never heard of called "The Seeds.") either artistically influenced each other, or impacted the music industry so others had to adapt to the changes. It's good at least one major piece of SMiLE analysis zoom out the lens beyond the immediate players.
5. Thoughts on "Good, Good, Good, Good Vibrations"
This is the most any book-level source I've read has gotten out of Tony Asher regarding GV. I'm inclined to believe that he's the reason it was called "Vibrations" and not "Vibes." It'd be an interesting butterfly effect alt reality--what if the same melody had been built around the shorter word? Alternatively, what if the Asher version of GV had been included on
Pet Sounds? I don't think it would've fit and without Mike's hook it wouldn't have been quite as big of a hit for sure, but maybe it would've boosted sales of PS?
There's a throwaway line from Danny Hutton that could have profound significance to the Tobelman School of Smilogy! On page 48, Mr. Hutton recalls the conversation where Brian played the demo for GV, and says "I think he'd dropped acid the night before he did that demo session." Now, according to Melinda and the WIBN bio, Brian did acid three times. If we assume for the sake of argument this is true, and assume further that trip #2 happened as described in that disowned biography, that means Brian's Tobelman-hyped third experience, where he "saw God," was here. (It's extremely vague in WIBN when/where this last trip was or what "seeing God" means exactly, to my immense displeasure, so there's nothing to rule out there, nor does Melinda go into any further detail.) That means the GV demo was made in the afterglow of Brian's supposedly enlightening, totally positive last trip, which is a nice thought I'd like to believe in, anyway. The GHS builds the entire SMiLE mythology around the dualism between Trip #2 (Hell) with Trip #3 (Heaven), so if you put stock in his theories, this is important stuff. To most other curious fans, it's at least an interesting anecdote providing a bit more insight in Brian's psychedelic intake. (For the record, Trip #1 with Loren Daro which inspired California Girls, is pretty well accounted for across sources and I accept it as established fact.)
Paul Williams is mentioned as another member of the so-called "Vosse Posse" group of hangers-on, though he was writing (or commissioning) articles in Crawdaddy so something productive was coming from his presence. His name doesn't pop up very often compared to the others, so I feel this is worth bringing up for the record. He claims his first time ever smoking weed was in the Arab "meditation tent." In the next chapter, Priore will name-drop another lesser known member of the "SMiLE clique:" Paul Jay Robbins, writer for the Los Angeles Free Press.
Mike's missing song credits is known in fan circles, and I think it's well-understood as at least part of his reason for being a grouch, but Priore is one of few to directly focus on this issue as a factor in the soon-to-be SMiLE impasse. This is the first book I've seen that claims Mike confronted Brian about the slight numerous times and wouldn't believe Brian when he pleaded innocence to any part in the song credits fiasco. Priore describes Brian bursting into tears over it and retreating whenever possible. "Year in and year out, this became a vicious circle of abuse [...] his dictatorial attitude towards Wilson evolved into habit." (This is a direct quote.) This is a significant missing piece I think doesn't get included often enough in the SMiLE narrative, probably because most of the seminal books were published before the '94 lawsuit (when the issue became widely known and Mike's grievance was legitimized) plus a lot of the sources are hostile to Mike and disinclined to give him any kind of sympathetic backstory.
Priore also expands on the narrative thread of Capitol sabotaging
Pet Sounds. Not only did they under-report sales, rush out a "Best of" comp, withhold promotion, but they refused to restock stores who'd sold out of PS copies unless they called the Hollywood office directly, and even then gave the store owners a hard time about it over the phone. The "rejection" of
Pet Sounds is an obnoxious rumor that refuses to die, used by SMiLE detractors as proof that "it would've flopped anyway, so who cares" without acknowledging that even if true, it still would've influenced other artists in the meantime, would've been critically reevaluated like PS has been in our timeline, etc. (Not to mention the success of GV and WIBN/GOK and SJB cast serious doubt it would've undersold in the first place, but I digress). I hate this talking point, it's in bad faith, overly-selective and deliberately obtuse in the face of so much evidence the "fans" ought to know by now. But never let inconvenient facts get in the way of an agenda.
6. Thoughts on "To Capture Lightning in a Bottle"
Heroes and Villains
Take them with a grain of salt or not at all, but Priore claims H&V started off as a standalone song that "led to the creation of more Western-themed music for the SMiLE album..." elsewhere he says it "rolled out into its own cinematic tale beyond the song itself, straight into music that would fill the remainder of SMiLE's first movement." Also, both Brian and Van credit each other for the track name. Between the two, I believe Van when he says Brian wrote it--I think later-era Brian is a little too eager to over-credit Van with SMiLE stuff for some reason, either he's still alienated from it for some reason. Maybe he feels bad about leaving Van out to dry early in his career and thinks it's a way of making amends? Or his memory is just scrambled so he's want to credit things he can't specifically remember doing to his co-writer.
Van confirms the IIGS lyrics we know (eggs and grits and lickety-split...) was originally part of Heroes proper but Brian "put them in another place later." Also, all his lyrics were "visual efforts" which coincides with Koestler's TAOC bisociative process and some of the less ridiculous theories in the Tobelman site. The lyrics of SMiLE, like the instrumentation choices, were meant to evoke visual associations and put the listener in a place. Unlike
Pet Sounds, where the lyrics were more to communicate emotional catharses and the instruments chosen purely by "what sounds good," here there was more of a deliberate, sensory component. I say again, even if it's true PS was more "complex" in arrangement and chords, SMiLE had more thought put into what instruments should be used on which track and the effect on the listener's imagination.
"One composition rolled into the next and a general subject matter began to emerge [...] Van Dyke recalled 'that was the genesis to start this infatuation with the American dream, to try to write something for the American century. This is about Plymouth Rock, which is where we thought this all started." The vibe I get from these and previous quotes is they started writing for Heroes, thinking what other disparate sections could be put in it, not necessarily worried about how they'd all connect while doing it. (How do you put lyrics about breakfast and the great shape of agriculture in a song about a guy raising his children after his bar-maid wife gets shot?) Then, somewhere along the way, realized "we have enough Americana-themed material here for several songs, let's make that a conceptual focus of the album!" Sounds reasonable enough to me. The invention of modular recording meant that every stray idea could be recorded and "we'll find some way to work it in later" which organically led to the idea of interrelated song cycles or thematic suites with possibly repeated leitmotifs. One innovation made the other inevitable, see? Then the many ways the material could be put together drove Brian mad (among all the various pressures). The whole "no, it was 12 separate songs, nothing fancy" school of thought is ignoring the primary sources where verses/choruses were juggled regularly even pre-67 and Van couldn't say how many songs he wrote for since he didn't know how the disparate pieces would fit into separate tracks. SMiLE's music was too "fluid" for a traditional album structure, in a way.
Do You Like Worms?
I know Brian has credited the title DYLW to VDP elsewhere, but here Van says it could've been an engineer, Brian or even Mike Love (!) who thought of it. I'm noticing a weird pattern, where no one can recall or wants to take credit for, almost anything in SMiLE (except the unambiguously popular stuff--everyone has a story of how they improved GV). For what it's worth, I always liked SMiLE's idiosyncratic song titles like Worms, Dada and Cow. Even the more straightforward titles like CE & SU are only referenced once in single-use verse lyrics, where conventionally pop songs are named for their choruses. (So, in any other album, CE would be "Who Ran the Iron Horse" and SU would be "Bygones" or "Are You Sleeping?"). It's just a cool thing that helps set the album apart from its peers, and makes you wonder "why did they choose that name then?" But it all makes sense: Worms is about the underbelly of decay and a cute childish joke question on a childlike album, Dada's initialism is a reference to LSD, CE is a play on the word "cannabis" according to Frank Holmes, Cow is an obscure US history reference, Surfs Up is a reference to the group's roots, the weird spelling of "Vega-Tables" a reference to the star Vega, part of the constellation Lyra, aka celestial music. It all works better than generic titles like "Roll Plymouth Rock" and "In Blue Hawaii" in my opinion.
When describing Worms as a song, Van explains that "Mahalo lu lei" is a Hawaiian prayer of thanksgiving, which I consider more evidence that if you use Prayer as an intro to the album (rather than a coda) it makes the most sense to pair it with Worms as the first main song. This way, it begins and ends with a prayer, one from the European invaders, the next from the native inhabitants. We're expressing the same thought in different ways, but that wasn't good enough for the settlers to recognize their hypocrisy denying the same religious freedom to others that they sought by coming to the new world. It just makes a lot more sense than Prayer going into Heroes in my personal opinion. (The other piece that works as an unlisted intro, You're Welcome, works well going into either Worms or Heroes.)
Old Master Painter
Van doesn't take credit for changing YAMS lyrics to the past tense. "That was a shock for me, from out of the blue." The way Priore recounts it, Brian got the idea of singing the song with mournful chord progressions and changed the lyrics so that would make sense.
Wonderful
When discussing Wonderful, Van calls it "musically, it's entirely different from anything else" and "I thought it was [...] an opportunity for a love song." But Brian seemingly wanted to explore "the relationship between the mother and the father and the child." Van even says straight up he wanted to do a traditional love song, thought it was sure to happen, but "I never found an opportunity to pursue that with the music I was given." This does tie in with that other VDP interview I shared where he wanted to make something more conventional but Brian didn't, despite what most would assume looking at each man's resumes. Van goes even further, to say SMiLE was not meant to be an "ivory tower" endeavor (IE overly academic, not relatable to the common man) and "I wanted to meet more chicks; that's why I was working for Brian Wilson." Reading this, it almost feels like both men were using the other to get into different scenes than they felt they were stuck in. Brian wanted to use Byrds-adjacent VDP for hip cred, Van wanted to use Brian to be around the screaming girls and mainstream limelight. Kinda funny to imagine.
[ASIDE:]Anyway, I don't see Wonderful as a love song at all, especially not romantic. I could be talked into seeing it as the song of a parent's love for the child and the bittersweet experience of letting her go, knowing she's going to get her heart broken at least once but it has to happen. I don't see romance with the boy at all; he's barely mentioned and only exists to "bump into" her, presumably knock her down a notch in some way ("all fall down") and take something from her, which I always assumed was her virginity ("and lost in the mystery, lost it all to a non-believer, and all that's left is a girl"). With the "non-believer" lyrics, it could almost be a very metaphorical retelling of Pocahontas or something, but it's not romantic so much as tragic to my ears. Wonderful as Pocahontas would tie it in with the first permanent settlement down south, Jamestown, and cover another geographical region like how Heroes is based in the southwest, Worms is in Massachusetts & Hawaii, CE is the golden spike point in Utah, Veggies the Mid-West breadbasket and Cow, obviously, Chicago Illinois. If we say WC is Brian's house in LA & SU an opera house on Broadway or something, that feels like most major regions covered outside Alaska.
[/ASIDE]Child is Father of the Man
Of CIFOTM, Van says "it was an instrumental piece until Brian asked me to put some words on it in 11/03." Pivotal quote that shows once and for all no vintage '66 lyrics are coming. However, Van has to be mistaken here. I'm not saying he's lying, I'm saying he forgot or Brian kept him in the dark. That test edit proves it couldn't have been an instrumental with the chorus-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structure. It doesn't work as an instrumental, it's too repetitive. Also, why would an instrumental have chorus vocals? It just doesn't make intuitive sense, what he's saying here.
In any case, the other big reveal for Child is it represented Van offering Brian a new turn of phrase to express his anxiety about growing up, to get the "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)" & PS themes out of his system. There's no mention of any kind of Americana interpretation of this, I Ran nor Wonderful from Van or Brian. The way this book is written, I'll admit it feels like these are just the songs made outside of the Heroes/America kick the two were on, rather than there being any kind of deliberate grandiose vision for a second movement. It seems that second movement thing may have grown organically out of anything not explicitly of the "Side 1 Americana" feels. So, probably if you want to be 100% accurate in a mix, the go-to structure is "Americana Side" with H&V as the center of gravity and as many pieces as reasonable in its orbit, then Side 2 is "everything that doesn't fit with those vibes or had to be placed here for the sake of balance" (IE, you can't have a 30 minute Side 1 and 15 minute side 2 on vinyl).
In a different passage, Van acknowledges Brian's spiritual bent working on SMiLE (so he was aware of that at least at some point) and ties it into Child, for whatever that's worth. On page 77 Van fully reveals his own spiritual bent, how Brian wore religion on his sleeve (which Van is usually uncomfortable with) and how these associations influenced the work overall. There's no explanation of how/where/what religious concepts influenced any particular songs, just "we hit upon some of the big questions, the unanswered questions, about the nature of belief and how important it might be." So there was some shared understanding that spirituality would be a part of the album at least at some point, but the specifics are vague. Van doesn't specifically mention humor as part of this theme, or really at all, when discussing SMiLE.
7. Thoughts on "Environmentalism on Tape"
The (So-Called) Elements
The way Priore decribes Brian's summer '66 trip to Big Sur implies Brian wrote Holiday, WC, Dada and Cow there explicitly as Elements. I'm not gonna weigh in on why I think that's BS, but that's what's written. However, a few pages on in the chapter, Van says "Truly, I would have been quite aware of Brian's interest in doing something about the elements, but that wasn't from the beginning; it was later on." Which totally contradicts what Priore said before. Van's particular phrasing implies Brian had only an interest in "doing
something" elemental, not that it was ever done at all, plus he rules out an early date explicitly. I think it's noteworthy Van doesn't bother to name drop anything they recorded as part of that "something," either, which you'd think he would if he could, if for no other reason than to give Priore something to write about AND put the whole blasted matter to bed once and for all. (Van must surely know about all the back and forth fan speculation on this.) The clear implication is Brian got the idea of doing an elements track "later on" (IE probably on or just before Nov 4 with those very rough demos I've mentioned) which precludes WC from being intended for Air when it was recorded, and the idea never got very far anyway. (Probably just Fire, y'know, the only song directly referred to as an element on tape or in the studio chatter. This isn't nearly as complicated as some people want it to be...)
Priore mentions a "piano demo" of the Elements "recorded Nov 4" but all that's listed that day is SU 1st movement track, H&V barnyard demo and...oh look at this...Psychedelic Sounds, the thing I've always said was a demo of the missing elements (and 2 comedy skits). Can anyone tell me what Priore's referring to here if not this recording? Otherwise, how is this not case closed? Why has this all-important quote been conveniently ignored by the so-called experts who told me I shouldn't be allowed to comment on SMiLE ten years ago for being so wrong in my interpretation of the elements?
And yet, despite finding compelling evidence for my own interpretation in his words, Priore unambiguously insists on the BWPS elements suite here, implying that was always the intent without any proof or quotes (vintage or otherwise), just takes it as a given because "hey that's how BWPS did it, so case closed." And yet I see interviews with him on this forum where he was on a recent podcast claiming BWPS was "never meant to be taken as the historical/definitive SMiLE tracklist." I guess back in 2005 he was wowed by getting an official SMiLE and unwilling to acknowledge anything that could be perceived as poking holes in the officially-sanctioned happy ending (that was the dominant attitude until fairly recently I'd say). Or maybe cooperation from Brian for this book was contingent on playing along with the revisionist history, same as how TSS was made to use BWPS as a template despite the '66 songs clearly suffering for it. This is one of my biggest pet peeves of SMiLE discussion--the way BWPS retroactively colors many people's understanding of the original sessions, and how challenging this faulty reasoning merits an earful about how "disrespectful" you are for "questioning the word of (a much older, forgetful, fundamentally different) Brian Wilson." It's become an exercise in dogmatic virtue signalling instead of objective investigative journalism, which doesn't interest me.
Random Non-Song Notes
Dumb Angel is said to have been replaced as a title "as recordings moved into autumn" which seems to track with other sources and the "proper start" to the sessions I mentioned in a previous post (the 9-19 Prayer session or certainly October, the high mater mark of the sessions). Prayer was not "a great opener for an album titled Dumb Angel but not for one called SMiLE" as I've heard it said, because the changeover was neck and neck with that session.
Van once again affirms he had no hand in production or arrangement. His quote on page 78, totally in awe of Brian's abilities, is fantastic. Never let it be said Van did not admire the hell out of Brian as an artist. (And then on page 83: "Everything in the music, that's Brian [...] I wrote words I thought he meant, although he didn't say those words [...] he communicates well on a non-verbal basis and certainly through the music.")
Van distances himself from Brian's particular New Age ethoses ("I've always been more dependent on astronomy than astrology") but asserts he didn't let ideological disagreements interfere with his task as Brian's interpreter ("we may have had some overriding theories [...] we just went trench by trench. He would show me a certain number, he would sing a phrase, and I would provide that phrase, and then he'd move on.") So in other words, the album's themes beyond Americana, Brian's "growing pains" and vague general spirituality are all solely Brian's influence--at least that's what I'm getting here. The unspoken implication seems to be Van thought Brian's mysticist bent was dopey, same as Tony Asher, but too polite to say it directly.
I Wanna Be Around/Workshop
Priore cites a previously unknown (to me) quote from Brian circa 1988 to Andy Paley confirming that Workshop was supposed to come after Fire. To me, this sequence has always just made intuitive sense if nothing else. Where do you put an instrumental of people building things out of wood? Probably either right before or right after things get audibly burned down, right? Or else, certainly they'd be directly linked together in some other straightforward thematic way. For example, I could see a world where Fire opens a side (damn, imagine that!) then a bunch of mostly downer music/lyrics showing the whole system was built on an uncertain, if not full-on rotten, foundation (depending on how harsh Bri & Van intended to be in their reflections on America) and culminating in Workshop at the end, demonstrating our ability (nay, responsibility) to rebuild from the ground up and do it better this time, after taking a long hard look at ourselves as a country.
Despite how much intuitive sense this makes, how much you'd have to bend common sense associations to make an alternate theory work, I have seen clowns arguing there's no connection between the two, or at least not necessarily so, in my time on the board. Admittedly there is the Vosse quote implying Workshop was meant to represent "building the barnyard" in the early barnyard suite, but why not link the two in sequence or admit the plan changed? Maybe Workshop (which is labelled "Friday Night (IIGS) on tape) was to come after a track called "Mrs OLeary's Cow," as Brian had renamed Fire later the same day it was recorded? Maybe this was a linking segment tying two otherwise distant musical riffs together in a conceptually unified way? Maybe it'd serve as yet another call for a more austere, pastoral lifestyle like Veggies--tear down the city, move out to the country and live as one with nature? Maybe the lyrics for IWBA reveal the fire was a metaphor for heartbreak and workshop is putting them together with new love? It works any way you look at it. Either way, to deny the obvious connection between a song of buildings getting destroyed and one of them being rebuilt is to travel from Philly to San Fran by flying across Eurasia and the entire Pacific--it's a stretch.
8. Thoughts on "Surf's Up"
This account of the song's writing is more detailed than any I've heard, with a few significant differences. In practically every version of SU's genesis I've seen, it's presented as if Dennis walked in, complained about the crowds' reactions to the BB striped shirts and this inspired the two collaborators to make a brilliant song no one could laugh at and call it Surf's Up. I always got the impression the name came before the song, that they went into the brainstorming process thinking "we're gonna write a song unlike any we've done before, so brilliant it's undeniably hip, but we're gonna be ironic by calling attention to our surfing roots!" Here, Brian and Van already had the melody and "all but the six syllables which included what became the title words" when Dennis walks in. Dennis doesn't just whine about the audience's reactions, he weeps and it's unclear if from humiliation or the beauty of the song he's hearing. Dennis asks "what's that called" and Van says "Surf's Up" in defiant reaction to Dennis' ordeal. IE, in some versions the title precedes the song, with the implication they then set out to write the most profound song they could while always intending to pay homage to their now-uncool roots from the outset. In this version, that deep, amazing song was already written and only lacked a name.
If we believe Priore's version, I think it's important to ask then: if Surf's Up wasn't written from the ground up as a self-conscious challenge to the band's popular perception as I'd always assumed, what actually inspired its content? I propose it was probably a song about Koestler's bisociative artistic process itself. The lyrics are popularly interpreted to be:
1) a man at the opera, his mind wandering to class divide,
2) then pondering the music he's hearing,
3) considering the state of the world and if others are perceiving what he does ("are you sleeping?"),
4) then contemplating the performer's role and relationship with the art they're making as well as with the audience,
5) then it's a series of images and emotions which art can conceptualize for us,
6) he comprehends the passage of time and the beauty of a children's song (expressions of the innocent). The song ends with a reprise of CIFOTM except now the phrase means "we can stand to learn something from the kids every now and then" as opposed to "your past (traumas) shape your future" as I suspect it would've meant in the song proper. What is this but the bisociative power of artistry in action, self consciously informing the audience of the power of music to paint images in our mind (OMP throwback, "canvas the town and brush the backdrop") and wake people up to certain new perspectives ("are you sleeping") through subliminal programming. Brian would be celebrating the application he'd just used on us for 40 minutes prior, revealing his hand and biggest call to arms at the same time. Had the song's name not become a subversive meta-commentary on how far they'd come as artists, I believe it may've become the "And Then We'll Have World Peace" title Brian always wanted to end an album with.
Final note, I always thought the children referenced in the song meant actual 12-and-under year old literal children, not "the youth counterculture" of pop music, IE Brian and Van themselves. That definitely changes things. Notice how Van credits the youth counterculture with ending Vietnam...yeah, like 6 years later. Brian never mentions Vietnam or current events once in connection with SMiLE that I've seen.
Priore repeats the notion that the Oppenheim recording session involved a fight over lyrics. As I understand it, we've since found the "margin notes" or "metadata" you might say of these recordings and "went very badly" was clarified to mean "nothing recorded that would look good on TV" (Brian was just having the guys sing vocalization snippets, not exciting lyrics or anything instrumental.) Brian agreed to meet later and give them a singing-piano demo that would film better. So this is a case where he's repeating inaccurate "oral tradition" info. If there'd been a fight on camera, you can bet the news would've aired it (assuming they didn't care if it made Brian look bad) or that we'd have heard more details by now. This is just another persistent SMiLE myth that won't die because it makes for a more interesting narrative than "the footage was too boring to use."
Derek Taylor claims VDP left of his own volition "as soon as he had been given a taste of the other guys' asinine resolve to thwart the project, and , balking at the vision of his pawn potential--some hapless entity there to be fought for--he immediately distanced himself from the project by getting involved in other work simultaneously." That sounds fairly harsh to both camps, but importantly it seems even Taylor interprets the BB actions to be hostile and uncompromising. In another quote he says "a key factor in the breakdown had to be the Beach Boys themselves, whose stubbornsess by this time had seemingly twisted itself into a grim determination to undermine the very foundations of this new music in order to get back to the old accepted, dumb formulas." But I detect a little bit of mockery for Van here as well, as if he was such a self-important artiste that the very idea someone didn't "get" his genius work so offended him he couldn't handle it. I may be reaching but Derek makes Van sound a bit of a prima donna here to my eyes.
9. Thoughts on "Conflict, Diversions And Deadlines"
Priore covers both his bases when explicitly discussing the Psychedelic Sounds: he refers to them as "segments of musical comedy" for various spoken word albums, but later admits "some of the comic and health-food ideas wound up as being part of SMiLE, so the sense of experimentation was essential to the creative process." IE, not necessarily the seeds of a WOIIFTM/USA type music concrete audio collage free form neo-album, but neither are they the worthless efforts of a bunch of braindrained stoners goofing off. Fair enough.
I do happen to agree with Priore when he says "so many project ideas began to give the precious SMiLE era a lack of focus and discipline." If Brian wasn't subsequently ashamed of all that time wasted on a lame joke at A&M's expense with Jasper Dailey, he should've been. And even as a defender of the PsychSounds to an extent, I'd rather he just spent that time on something more productive. A precursor to WOIIFTM with the music concrete audio collages would've been fantastic, but not at the expense of the actual songs remaining unfinished--I'd gladly take a straightforward 12 track banded album over nothing in '67.
Vosse recounts a story where Brian consulted the I Ching "one night" and it told him that everyone in the room (not clear who or how many besides Brian and Vosse) were ultimately meant to go on their own way. Brian took this seriously, or used it as a convenient "out" to break up a scene he was losing faith in, or to avoid having to come up short if SMiLE didn't live up to the hype. Same as if you think he really believed Siegal's girlfriend had ESP or if he really thought Anderle had numerologically captured his soul in the painting. (It's like each of Brian's adopted creeds demanded a sacrifice, or every new idea he tried to incorporate meant kicking a prior muse out of the ring to make room.)
This is the only source that provides a timeline on when Frank Holmes was involved. He met with the other two in June, finished his work by October. "It was kind of sporadic: I'd get a little piece of it here and there, and I submitted the cover," which implies Van gave him some lyric sheets as he finished them, and since Van never finished all the lyrics neither did Frank have complete lyrics either. Whatever the last song was Van passed along to Frank by October is anyone's guess (Veggies as a proto-element?). Frank was able to talk himself into the job as well as including the booklet by the sounds of it, so good for him. If hired in June, that means his storefront idea was part of an album called Dumb Angel as well, which I think is worth mentioning as well. (It used to be popular to imagine this dramatic shift in line with the name change, that the more "serious" or religious songs (IE prayer) were done under the DA banner, then with the new title suddenly sillier songs and the happy storefront drawing came to be. That doesn't seem to have been the case, it feels like DA into SMiLE was incidental to the album's overall identity and direction.)
According to Van, Frank Holmes was given no direct instructions but intuitively understood what Brian wanted through "[his] powers of suggestion" and Holmes' work defined the image Brian and Van understood the music by going forward, where they started "thinking of it in cartoon terms [...] to me, it was a music cartoon and Frank showed that without being told anything." It's weird though, because Brian scrapped every non-GV & non-Prayer session pre-October (redoing WC and Wonderful with different arrangements, others never touching again) around when he would've gotten the final booklet, perhaps implying that what he'd recorded before didn't fit the new established visual aesthetic...however those early SMiLE recordings fit the happy Smile Shop perfectly while the more melancholy CIFOTM & CE & Worms he moved onto immediately post-cover seem like such a contrast! Was Brian being deliberately subversive or just producing what came naturally without regard to "matching" the cover? In any case, I get the impression Van was more inspired by Frank's work than Brian--afterall, Van had known him before the project and introduced both men.
One of the abandoned Brother Records projects is said to have been an animated movie using Frank Holmes' SMiLE illustrations as inspiration, essentially
Yellow Submarine for the Beach Boys, probably coming out around the same time or slightly before its rival. If that wouldn't have been the coolest thing ever... How did the Beach Boys blow it THAT bad to miss such a cool opporunity? They really could've had it all and been what the Beatles are if they didn't screw this up...
10. Thoughts on "The New Single Will Be Heroes & Villains"
If Chuck Britz' description of the two-sided Heroes single is right (and the tape/track labels on TSS back it up) this would've been a very disappointing mix at least as far as Side 2 goes. I don't think too many people would ever be turning over the vinyl to hear three annoying, slightly different "Heroes" chants. (It does prove Brian's fascination with the concept of chanting though, along with the Nov 4 experiments, "You're Welcome," "Do a Lot" and then the
Smiley "With Me Tonight" & "Whistle In" tracks.) I remember when posters in the early 2010s had the opinion that 2-sided Heroes would've been a "SMiLE sampler pack" with pieces of most of the other major songs recontextualized as part of Heroes. (So the BR chorus, false barnyard fade, new CIFOTM chorus vocal, & IIGS-style tape explosion across a 6~12 minute mix of the song.) That is admittedly a much cooler idea, but it's contradicted by this and a Brian quote where he frets about the B-side because he doesn't want to reveal too much of SMiLE at once--the opposite of what you'd want if you're releasing a sampler.
11. Thoughts on "Brother Records Vs Capitol Records"
No real comment on this except Priore doesn't really go into how the legal situation almost certainly interfered with the music until the next chapter's shenanigans with the single and subsequent ill will from Capitol. This chapter is just the bare facts and seems underwhelming on first pass, but in the next section Priore quotes Paul Williams saying "Ironically, the independence that forming Brother Records was supposed to bring [...] knocked SMiLE -- and the Beach Boys -- out of the water. [...] Anderle's initial idea [...] was sound, but the time it takes to put this type of thing through the courts was not conducive to the production race that was important during this period of radical change in pop." Damn. Poor Anderle loved Brian and the project so much, it's sad to think that by trying to help he arguably did as much as anyone to hurt the album.
Besides the legal red tape, I think Anderle having to constantly press for signatures and try to get Brian to understand what had to happen legalistically/financially probably soured the mood for a guy who couldn't even bother to cash checks to himself. I know Anderle was as delicate as possible, his job was to take as much of this stress away from Brian so the maestro could focus on the music, but there's still anecdotes of David needing Brian to sign something or attend a meeting and it'd be like pulling teeth. There was still the need for Brother to have a single ASAP, requiring Anderle to press for Brian to focus on Heroes, which is as much of a turning point in SMiLE's fortunes as Fire and the CE incident--Anderle regrets it immensely in Leaf's first book. Similarly, the fact that Capitol was now a bitter legal enemy but would profit from, or have the power to bury, his magnum opus is such a confounding situation for Brian to be in, and no source but the Badman book really delves into that.
12. Thoughts on "The New Single Will Now Be: Vega-tables"
Priore calls Veggies "the last composition to reach tape" which is objectively untrue (that's Elements going by Dec tracklist-officials, or else Dada & IWBA/Workshop going by anything officially unlisted that likely became a track later. Even if Priore isn't including them due to lack of lyrics, Worms, Sunshine & SU still post-date the Veggie demo). I'm not trying to be persnickety but if he gets easily-checked things like this wrong for, what, the sake of dramatic emphasis (?), that's at least a yellow-flag for other info in the book.
We get another contradiction here when Van says "I was out of the loop by then, in a place where there were no lyrics intended when he went into the studio, when he made up music independent of any plan to use lyrics [...] it was my memory that I was fired because it was already decided by Mike Love, as well as the least-known band members, that I'd written some indecipherable and unnecessary words." I have several problems with this, so I'm going to list them:1) This is in contrast to other sources, like Derek Taylor, saying Van quit. Other sources also say he quit and Van has given this impression elsewhere. The Taylor quote, reading between the lines, seems to imply Van was a bit melodramatic and hasty in his reaction to criticism and I'm somewhat inclined to agree. I think some of VDP's issue with the project, the cagey-ness, conflicting statements and bitterness, maybe stems from shame at how he overreacted rather than stand his ground or try to compromise and work with Mike. But that's just my intuition.
2) This statement implies Brian was recording music without a plan for lyrics, which I don't think flies considering he was working on songs with lyrics already written if we're talking about the sequels. (Van's quote only makes sense if Brian were working on the Elements or Dada or the supposedly lyricless CIFOTM.) Maybe Van means he was out of the loop come the Fire session (other quotes imply the same) so he either wasn't told or had no interest in coming back to refine Heroes or Veggies when it came time to give them more involved single-cuts.
3) It implies the other band members had the power to fire VDP or Brian was persuaded to go along with it, (because so much is made of GV on
Smiley as the inflection point where Brian was out-voted for the first time, so if Van was fired that implies Brian didn't fight for him, which is a tough line to swallow). But so many other sources imply Brian was blindsided and lost when Van left. I think VDP is just being overdramatic and a bit of a self-pitying spoil sport here if I may say so. He got pushback on some words, took it extremely personally and pulled a "oh, guess you hate me, I'm taking my ball and going home" at the first sign of disagreement. Then he tells people he got fired so he can claim victimhood instead of answering the question "why didn't you stand up for your work, or tailor it to the client, or ask Brian to pick a side?" I think Van and Brian sometimes like to have their cake and eat it too when blaming it all on Mike. Nobody else, not even Mike himself, claims he had that much power in '66.
Priore expands on a point made in the Badman book, that Veggies was suddenly announced as the new single largely as a move against Capitol. This is another reason I think the lawsuit was a major factor--twice now it forced Brian to suddenly switch gears before properly finishing a project, first the album proper then the Heroes single. It meant business and legalistic spite were interfering in the creative process in a way that hadn't been so for
Today and PS. (Almost like he could fend off Mike or Capitol but not both full-force at the same time AND have way more work to do in the studio suddenly editing disparate pieces of tape.) The way Priore tells it, the whole switcheroo was a rouse to get Capitol to give them a good distribution deal for a Brother Records release of Heroes, but I imagine all these left-turns and "extra work" on arguably SMiLE's weakest major song couldn't have been good for Brian's artistic focus on the big picture. Truly a pyrrhic victory.
Van did not support Veggies as a single release and felt the "tactical decision" to switch focus on it over Heroes was "tremendously ill advised" and "lent to the distractions that drove Brian nuts." I'm inclined to agree. Van says he left this second time because the business/legal decisions like "what single will be best for BR" was affecting the creative process. "There were too many cooks in the kitchen. The project lost its intimacy, its focus, and we had [...] nowhere to find a way to get the job done without the social pressures, which were enormous [...] and I finally left." In early-period SMiLE discussions, the factions drawn were always "Vosse Posse" vs Mike & the other Beach Boys (maybe sans Dennis). Closer examination reveals there was no "Vosse Posse" it was more like "the Anderle Assembly" as he was the one introducing almost all the non-collaborators to the scene, along with Derek Taylor. And not all of the "Anderle Assembly" were of one mind--nobody liked Siegal from what I recall, Van & Vosse were there to help Brian make great art, Anderle himself was the businessman (though he loved the music and Brian), Hutton & Volman were just along for the ride, Williams & Robbins were there for a good story to tell, Darro presumably supplied the drugs, Taylor had to pretend everything happening was "genius," Marilyn was trying to keep a lid on the madness, etc. They were not necessarily friends, they each had their own agendas and sometimes (maybe all the time) they got in each others' way and prevented the others from doing their jobs properly. I think this important nuance often gets lost in the shuffle--these people were not of one mind, united in the cause of hip psychedelia against philistine Mike.
That all said, Priore makes the bold assertion--that I've not seen corroborated anywhere else--that Mike Love started giving Derek Taylor marching orders and this is what led to the premature cancellation announcement. Without evidence or repetition in another independently researched book I'm skeptical as hell. If,
if this is true, however, I take back any defense I've ever leveled on Mike Love's behalf. IF he did such a thing, he's as big an asshole as his harshest detractors say, unworthy of any benefit of the doubt and officially the man who killed SMiLE afterall. But that's a BIG "
IF." I want to see corroborating statements from Taylor, or receipts of some kind. You can't just throw out an accusation like this without proof--and in case there's any doubt, I don't even like Mike.
Another highly unlikely claim is that SMiLE was actually almost finished "all the pieces were there" and the final cancelled session was for a mixdown of the whole album. Yeah, and that's why CIFOTM lyrics were never written, lead vocals for most tracks never recorded, a suitable replacement for the seemingly scrapped Elements undecided upon... This is absolute "hopium" bullshit and it casts doubt on every other questionable or unique claim in the entire book, I'm sad to say. (If he'd lie about this, or get this wrong, what else is he feeding us...) Priore is a good writer who obviously has a lot of passion for the subject matter and did a lot of research, talked to the principles... It's a shame he lets his weird fan theories and obsessive need to tie everything up in a neat little bow ("no we didn't miss out on anything--SMiLE was all done, they just needed to do a final mixdown! We always had the elements and that wasn't a dropped concept at all, the lack of vocals or BW signature counter-melodies was all intentional!") ruin his credibility for no reason. Stuff like this just pisses me off because, to the well-researched, it's so blatantly untrue but then other less discerning fans take this at face value and repeat it as gospel, muddying the waters on having a productive discourse for all time. I've had people tell me I'm not allowed to comment on SMiLE threads until I read Priore and then I do and get this nonsense.
Van accuses Taylor of being a scout for the Beatles, directly stating "I think [he] facilitated the Beatles listening to SMiLE before the advent of
Sgt Pepper [...] Brian was very sad. He felt violated, raped." There absolutely was something kooky going on with the tapes around this time, like the GV masters going missing for days and I recall hearing that some tapes like I Ran went missing early. However, I believe sleuths on these and other fan forums have matched up the timelines and determined the Beatles couldn't have heard SMiLE or at least not in a time-frame that would've made a difference in their own creative process. (After
Revolver and "Strawberry Fields," they didn't need help making something like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," let's be real.) I get the vibe from their quotes about each other that VDP and Taylor didn't particularly get along, which is where this accusation is maybe coming from. Also, while the Beatles may not have been exposed to illicit SMiLE tapes, there's no reason to think other people in the industry couldn't have sneaked a peak--in note #14 Priore references a
Crawdaddy article pointing the finger at Gary Usher, a previous BB lyricist. In any case, what's important is Brian believed this could've happened and it made him feel paranoid and betrayed.
13. Thoughts on "A Bunt Instead of a Grand Slam"
VDP says he stopped working with Brian the same month he (Brian) moved to Bellagio. That makes for a pretty solid cutoff point because Brian has said he wrote CCW almost immediately after the move, and the first recording date for that song almost perfectly coincide with the "official" changeover from SMiLE to
Smiley in the sessionography.
Brian moved into the home studio to keep his music safe, to be able to record whenever, to avoid catching flak from console operators' unions, but according to Hal Blaine, he then got "distracted" by the constant presence of the BBs themselves. Supposedly, without "the discipline of the clock" and having to pay overtime, or clear out before the rented time expired, the group was more prone to procrastinate, to "throw their weight around" and argue. I had never heard this before, but also they took equipment with them on tour so Brian could never surprise them with a purely independent masterpiece again. They'd have more leverage in the decision making process going forward.
Once again, specific anecdotes about
Smiley--what a typical session might've been like, the decision-making process to go in that direction and change the name, these supposed fights about SU that almost broke up the band--are sorely lacking. No one remembers and no one wants to talk about it. I wish, assuming Priore had the gumption to probe and Brian rebuffed him, that the author would share what he asked, how, and Brian's response (or lack thereof) even if it was vague and unhelpful. ("I asked when the official change from SMiLE to Smiley occurred and why, if it was his or Mike's decision and the group's reactions, but Brian stopped responding verbally and zoned out" <something like this would at least let us know Priore tried and cared to delve as deep as possible. As is, it just feels like
Smiley and its possible overlooked relationship to SMiLE proper, the possibly smooth transition at Brian's behest, doesn't fit his agenda so he didn't even ask or something.)
This book has the most involved description of the Redwood sessions I've seen as well. The quotes about how "the vibes changed immediately" and "a black cloud had suddenly surrounded Brian" whenever Mike entered the room are powerful. "Mike can be pretty forceful, so I guess Brian just bailed out." I defend Mike against accusations of killing SMiLE but he is still a huge asshole a lot of the time, even giving him every benefit of the doubt he always digs his hole deeper or refuses to apologize for anything he's done wrong. He did absolutely kill Brian's solo artist/producer ambitions and that's a really lousy thing to do. He was not entitled to leech off Brian's success and have first pick of his cousin's talents forever just because they're related and had been in the same band. The people who let him off the hook for everything he's done take it too far in the other direction, and of course I'm the first to say Brian and VDP aren't perfect either.
