A Musician's View of Smile's Collapse

[FatherOfTheMan Sr101]

I was just thinking about this recently, we have some musicians here, and I myself have made a few records, and I realized something that I now believe may have caused Smile's true demise...

When an album is winding down, the "sweetening" process begins, and the creative process ends, you have enough music, and it's time to make it presentable...
This is normally considered to be the least interesting and most time consuming part of record making, and Brian, as we know, was a random and fast worker.
From experience, things like re-doing vocal parts that can be better and remixing and (in Smile's case) re configuring the music are all very unattractive tasks.
Brian's growing usage of drugs must have made it worse, as his attention span would've been very low. Need more proof?

While examining the Pet Sounds sessions, Brian would spend hours recording the final backing track and vocal takes, seems normal, but hold on...
How many of these tracks were put on a hiatus, or even recorded over more then a month long period. Brian was very determined to finish the tracks in a semi-short period of time.

Smile, however is a different story, tracks like Heroes and Villians were recorded for MONTHS. Attention and determination fade, and eventually it's time to move on...

Enter Smiley Smile.

Recorded in basically a week, the album was a perfect example of my idea, after recording Pet Sounds, and obsessing over topping it for almost a full year, Brian completed an album in less time then it took to finish 1 minute of Heroes and Villians.

My point is, musicians and composers are creative people, they go through dry periods with no output, and then have years like '66 and '67 for Brian, Smile was an example of a project too large to stay focused on, and the lack of focus led to making an already boring and uncreative process even worse.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

Yeah, but when did Smile's winding down period begin?

[FatherOfTheMan Sr101]

Yeah, but when did Smile's winding down period begin?

I'm assuming around 1967, the pressure from the label usually means it's time to cut your losses and finish up.

[18thofMay]

Yeah, but when did Smile's winding down period begin?

I'm assuming around 1967, the pressure from the label usually means it's time to cut your losses and finish up.

18th of May

[FatherOfTheMan Sr101]

Another interesting thing happened to me that really struck...

I wrote a song "Last Days of Our Lives"... really good song. I played a piano demo, then went and recorded it in pieces.

It sounded AMAZING, but I was having trouble fitting it all together, not in tempo, not in key, in feel. It just didn't work.

So after 2 months wasted, I decided to just play the whole thing in one go acoustically, you'll be hearing that soon...

But isn't that kind of like Smile -> Smiley Smile?

[Chocolate Shake Man]

Yeah, but when did Smile's winding down period begin?

I'm assuming around 1967, the pressure from the label usually means it's time to cut your losses and finish up.

Yyyeaahhh...but Heroes and Villains wasn't in a winding down phase, neither was Surf's Up. Recording sessions on Vega-Tables didn't begin until really late into the sessions. Same could be said about DaDa if it was meant to be a Smile song at some point. Personally, I don't think Brian had even begun to consider the winding down process for Smile by the time he started recording for Smiley.

[FatherOfTheMan Sr101]

IMO, smiley was brian winding down smile.

[Reddiwhip]

Yeah, but when did Smile's winding down period begin?

I'm assuming around 1967, the pressure from the label usually means it's time to cut your losses and finish up.

18th of May

Too late.  Several people there at the time associated moving out of the Laurel Canyon house with the time of Smile's demise.  That puts it around mid April. 


You could potentially say that when Vega-Tables became the next single was when it started falling apart.