SMiLE Sessions box set!

[Bill Tobelman]

Andrew said this:

Speaking of Frank's illustrations in the booklet, I can't believe no-one's commented - unless I missed it, which is always likely - on the 'quoting' of one sketch in another,

That's excellent work Mr. Doe!

It also goes well with BWPS's "rondelet" lyric, which suggests a repeat.

I'm going to do something now which is very uncool--quote from my own website.

Those two elements likely represent Brian actually conceiving SMiLE during his third LSD trip as they appear at the proper moment in SMiLE, after the ego-death/rebirth event, and they themselves are a portrayal of that SAME death/rebirth event (and if one wants to go all the way--it makes logical sense to assume that within this original conception of SMiLE one would find, near the end of those two elements, yet another "portrayal of that SAME death/rebirth event" which is Brian originally conceiving SMiLE.

That was obviously written by a square, but it does have that same "quoting" quality to it that Andrew finds in Mr. Holmes' work.

As you can see there is some artistic consistency throughout the work.

[juggler]

The difference between Good Vibrations and Heores and Villains says it all. Somewhere in between those two releases Brian peaked. I don't think Brian ever fully ripened as an artist.

I'm not sure what Andrew's point is, are those good songs? Yes. Are they fully mature relative to Brian's total output? No. Good Vibrations was a major turn and represented the most radical expression of his vision yet. It's the first full blossoming of everything Brian Wilson could be. In some ways Brian had the most freedom of any artist in the studio era, the amount of control he had was pretty astonishing.

Chuck Britz on Heroes & Villains:

" It was done like 'Good Vibrations'; it was just one hell of a song. It was a great song.Then, I understand, they went up to his home, and they did a lot of things. They cut it and inserted an organ down at the bottom of (Brian's) pool to get the pool quality.They did all kinds of things, but I think basically it could have been as good a classic as 'Good Vibrations' or better. Our (version) ran about five or six minutes; it was just a further step from 'Good Vibrations'. It had some great melodic lines. The arrangement was so full, and it was just something that I was very dissappointed in when I heard the final product."(p. 114, Leaf)

[Cam Mott]

Just my opinion, claims of how affected Brian and SMiLE were by drugs and mental illness during the SMiLE period are greatly exaggerated if not completely off-base. IMO, the behavior attributed to drugs and mental illness are really just the effects of being young and privileged and without bounds. Brian did what he wanted to do and no one told him different but if they tried [which they pretty much didn't] he just charmingly rolled right over them. The Velvet Steamroller.
When he didn't particularly like what he was doing and his fans didn't either, he was thrown for a loop by that, not drugs and mental illness or pressure or mean people or.......

Brian had a vision about music of love and humor and religion, he got with a guy he thought might get it, it didn't work out for Brian. Brian wasn't trying to seem more druggy, he didn't like how druggy it was.

[pixletwin]

Scratch Salt Lake City off the list (and the map, too, while you're at it!) and I agree completely

Ouch! 

[Mikie]

Just my opinion, claims of how affected Brian and SMiLE were by drugs and mental illness during the SMiLE period are greatly exaggerated if not completely off-base.

That's your opinion.


I had dinner with and spent some time afterward with Frank Holmes in San Francisco in 2004. I asked him why he thought Brian aborted SMiLE. I also asked Marilyn Wilson (in person) the main reason(s) why.  Both responded immediately to my question. Guess what it was? It wasn't "mental illness".

Brian Wilson hisself:

"Well, when I first, when we did Smile, I was into hashish and we were all getting real stoned. And what happened was, I couldn’t go…I was so stoned out of my head that I couldn’t get one…one track, like a round of music…”

"When we first began Smile I had crazy ideas. I was smoking hashish and we were laying on the floor singing-from laying on the floor we put the microphones down on our heads. Doing crazy things and we got into a very strange bag.”

"We never finished it, because a lot of that sh*t bothered me-but half of the sh*t we didn’t finish anyway. Van Dyke Parks did a lot of it; we used a lot of fuzz tone. It was inspiring ‘cause Van Dyke is a very creative person, and it was a boost to me because he had a lot of energy and a lot of fresh ideas, so that energy has helped me. But a lot of the stuff was what I call little ‘segments’ of songs, and it was a period when I was getting stoned and so we never really got an album; we never finished anything! Why? Because we got off on bags that just fucking didn’t have any value for vocals! A lot of trakcs just weren’t made for vocals, so the group couldn’t do it! We really got stoned! We were too fucking high, you know, to complete the stuff! We were stoned! You know, stoned on hash ‘n’ sh*t!”

“I was able to get hold of all these drugs and they messed me up, they messed up my mind.”

“I took the LSD and that just…totally tore my head off. Acid was like…everything I could ever be or everything I wouldn’t be – I came to grips with. You just come to grips with what you are, what you can do and what you can’t do. And you learn to face it.”

Mike: “I didn’t resonate well with what was going on at that time. He was writing these songs under the influence of various substances and it didn’t make any sense to me.”

Dennis: “I think it was the drugs.”

Huh. Based on the above statements and asking two people who were close to Brian during that period, I think it's safe to say that uh........

[Bill Tobelman]

Mikie said:

I had dinner with and spent some time afterward with Frank Holmes in San Francisco in 2004. I asked him why he thought Brian aborted SMiLE. I also asked Marilyn Wilson (in person) the main reason(s) why.  Both responded immediately to my question. Guess what it was? It wasn't "mental illness".

"Good Vibrations" has an ESP thing about it..."picking up" and all that. The SMILE project, if it was about passing on a state of mind, was about transmitting and "picking up" on that level.

Brian's reaction to the movie SECONDS is on this level as well. When Brian says "there could be mind gangsters" this implies stealing on this ESP mental level. Rasmus Skotte did a nice job of comparing SECONDS to Brian's LSD trips. My idea is that he was keeping some of his trip info totally secret & to see it played out in a movie made him pretty paranoid.

If he wasn't leaking secrets then it must the other "enlightened" folks on the same mental level in his inner circle. Pretty soon all of those folks were gone too.

So then SMILE seems like a curse to the poor guy, dig?

 

[Mahalo]

Just my opinion, claims of how affected Brian and SMiLE were by drugs and mental illness during the SMiLE period are greatly exaggerated if not completely off-base.

That's your opinion.


I had dinner with and spent some time afterward with Frank Holmes in San Francisco in 2004. I asked him why he thought Brian aborted SMiLE. I also asked Marilyn Wilson (in person) the main reason(s) why.  Both responded immediately to my question. Guess what it was? It wasn't "mental illness".

Brian Wilson hisself:

"Well, when I first, when we did Smile, I was into hashish and we were all getting real stoned. And what happened was, I couldn’t go…I was so stoned out of my head that I couldn’t get one…one track, like a round of music…”

"When we first began Smile I had crazy ideas. I was smoking hashish and we were laying on the floor singing-from laying on the floor we put the microphones down on our heads. Doing crazy things and we got into a very strange bag.”

"We never finished it, because a lot of that merda bothered me-but half of the merda we didn’t finish anyway. Van Dyke Parks did a lot of it; we used a lot of fuzz tone. It was inspiring ‘cause Van Dyke is a very creative person, and it was a boost to me because he had a lot of energy and a lot of fresh ideas, so that energy has helped me. But a lot of the stuff was what I call little ‘segments’ of songs, and it was a period when I was getting stoned and so we never really got an album; we never finished anything! Why? Because we got off on bags that just friggin' didn’t have any value for vocals! A lot of trakcs just weren’t made for vocals, so the group couldn’t do it! We really got stoned! We were too friggin' high, you know, to complete the stuff! We were stoned! You know, stoned on hash ‘n’ merda!”

“I was able to get hold of all these drugs and they messed me up, they messed up my mind.”

“I took the LSD and that just…totally tore my head off. Acid was like…everything I could ever be or everything I wouldn’t be – I came to grips with. You just come to grips with what you are, what you can do and what you can’t do. And you learn to face it.”

Mike: “I didn’t resonate well with what was going on at that time. He was writing these songs under the influence of various substances and it didn’t make any sense to me.”

Dennis: “I think it was the drugs.”

Huh. Based on the above statements and asking two people who were close to Brian during that period, I think it's safe to say that uh........

Thanx Mikie, a voice of reason for sure. I am sick of people making excuses for the drugs. Yeah, they helped him expand his mind, but just accept the fact that it also clouded his mind. He was not the first or last...

Mike: "The results of promiscuous drug use is pretty obvious..." Endless Harmony Doc

[Mahalo]

   <-------------------------------- (me after reading this thread)

[Dunderhead]

Yes, everything is everyone's own opinion. It seems we're going kind of crazy with this "argument" around here recently.

Those quotes you just listed, well those are opinions as well. Brian and various others interpretation of what happened in 1966. Some people's opinions are more valuable than others granted but we won't ever be able to factually determine these things one way or the other.

Can we count on someone to have the correct interpretation of their own problems? Depends on the person, but I think it's fairly common for people to not be completely self aware, or to blame various factors, perhaps unfairly, for their troubles. Brian has learned to blame drugs over the years, they're an easy target. He's had decades of people blaming his drug use. But I don't think its ever fair to blame only drugs for anyone's problems, issues with drugs are often connected to other, deeper problems.

I really don't buy anyone blaming LSD. I think one thing often overlooked is the fact that Brian did not experience serious symptoms of psychosis immediately following his trips. All the trip reports I've ever read have people reporting their issues came on directly following their trips. That something was noticeably different in the days-weeks following. For Brian to trip and then mentally degenerate months after the fact isn't typical, and seems like it has been misidentified as the main issue.

I'd be much quicker to blame the abuse of weed for Brian's paranoia. But again, I think the abuse of drugs is tied closely to underlying unhappiness, self-esteem issues etc.

I don't think Brian was affected by LSD in the way often portrayed. And I think what drug issues he did have were an extension of other issues that Brian had independently of drugs.

[Runaways]

Yes, everything is everyone's own opinion. It seems we're going kind of crazy with this "argument" around here recently.

Those quotes you just listed, well those are opinions as well. Brian and various others interpretation of what happened in 1966. Some people's opinions are more valuable than others granted but we won't ever be able to factually determine these things one way or the other.

Can we count on someone to have the correct interpretation of their own problems? Depends on the person, but I think it's fairly common for people to not be completely self aware, or to blame various factors, perhaps unfairly, for their problems. Brian has learned to blame drugs over the years, they're an easy target. Brian's had decades of people blaming his drug use. But I don't think its ever fair to blame only drugs for anyone's problems, problems with drugs are often connected to other, personal problems.

I really don't buy anyone blaming LSD. I think one thing often overlooked is the fact that Brian did not experience serious symptoms of psychosis immediately following his trips. All the trip reports I've ever read have people reporting their issues came on directly following their trips. That something was noticeably different in the days-weeks following. For Brian to trip and then mentally degenerate months after the fact isn't typical, and seems like it has been misidentified as the main issue.

I'd be much quicker to blame the abuse of weed for Brian's paranoia. But again, I think the abuse of drugs is tied closely to underlying unhappiness, self-esteem issues etc.

I don't think Brian was affected by LSD in the way often portrayed. And I think what drug issues he did have were an extension of other issues that Brian had independently of drugs.

funny cause everyone on the BWPS dvd said drugs were not a problem.

[Mikie]

Yes, everything is everyone's own opinion. It seems we're going kind of crazy with this "argument" around here recently.

For me, it's not an argument.  For me, it's pretty much common sense.  It's from the horse's mouth and those close to him.  I also briefly talked to Anderle in the lobby at one of Brian's gigs in S.F.  He was another "insider" at the time. And I think Parks himself has alluded to the drug use. Sorry to name drop, but what more do you want?  There's nothing more here to argue about as far as the how's, what's, where's, and why's concerning Brian's drug use in 1966/'67 and the direct influences it had on the music of Smile and its demise. What would it take to convince you?

And if Brian and Van Dyke say there's no Zen connection, I believe them! That's good enough for me. They should know, right? Nobody's holding them against the fire threatening death and telling them to say otherwise, are they?

So many Smile-o-Philes with different way-out interpretations and people going off on tangents with various meanings to the Smile stuff - I really wonder what Wilson & Parks would think if they were reading this poo. It all started with Priore back in the early 80's. Just enjoy it at its face value, eh?

[Mikie]

  <-------------------------------- (me after reading this thread)

Yeah, no poo!  Reminds me of what AGD says sometimes. "You can't tell someone something they don't want to hear".

[Dunderhead]

I don't think straight from the horses mouth is good enough, because well, humans aren't horses. Humans aren't always 100% honest, even with themselves. People fail to identify the real issues affecting them all the time. We try and skirt responsibility, we always try and find ways to blame others for our traffic accidents or for our being fired or what have you, even when sometimes it really is our fault.
In the case of Brian Wilson, I think drugs are the scapegoat. Drug abuse and addiction isn't always just about the drugs. In many ways I think Brian still hasn't overcome his original problems that he started out with going all the way back to his nervous breakdown on the plane in 1964. The fact that he was dealing with merda before he touched drugs, and is dealing with the same merda long after he's totally kicked drugs, I think is evidence that there's probably stuff going on affecting him besides drugs.

The point is people are not often capable of being totally objective when considering their own situations. It's human nature.

Brian blaming drug use after the fact is simply Brian's interpretation of events. Not fact.
And considering how many different versions there are, how many different interpretations, how many times the players have changed their stories. Brian seems to flip flop constantly in interviews. None of these statements are fact, they're just Brian's own opinion about his life, his own interpretation of his story, and I think it's very common for the narratives that we tell ourselves to be distorted or biased, and even more common for us to distort those narratives even further when we relay them to other people.

I think the main problem facing Brian is a lack of self confidence. I think that's always been his problem. He has a fear of not living up to expectations, of disappointing people, or not making people happy, of being rejected, etc etc. I think that's his main problem, and that's why SMiLE was canned. Brian wasn't sure how his work would be taken by the public, and was hurt that it wasn't being well received by some of the people close to him. He slunk away. What he was doing required supreme confidence. Confidence is what makes great artists. The confidence to put radical, revealing material out into the world and have it criticized, interpreted, and analyzed by anyone and everyone. Brian didn't have that confidence, he was scared and he backed down at the critical juncture of his career.

[Runaways]

I think is evidence that there's probably stuff going on affecting him besides drugs.

no way.

[18thofMay]

I don't think straight from the horses mouth is good enough, because well, humans aren't horses. Humans aren't always 100% honest, even with themselves. People fail to identify the real issues affecting them all the time. We try and skirt responsibility, we always try and find ways to blame others for our traffic accidents or for our being fired or what have you, even when sometimes it really is our fault.
In the case of Brian Wilson, I think drugs are the scapegoat. Drug abuse and addiction isn't always just about the drugs. In many ways I think Brian still hasn't overcome his original problems that he started out with going all the way back to his nervous breakdown on the plane in 1964. The fact that he was dealing with merda before he touched drugs, and is dealing with the same merda long after he's totally kicked drugs, I think is evidence that there's probably stuff going on affecting him besides drugs.

The point is people are not often capable of being totally objective when considering their own situations. It's human nature.

Brian blaming drug use after the fact is simply Brian's interpretation of events. Not fact.
And considering how many different versions there are, how many different interpretations, how many times the players have changed their stories. Brian seems to flip flop constantly in interviews. None of these statements are fact, they're just Brian's own opinion about his life, his own interpretation of his story, and I think it's very common for the narratives that we tell ourselves to be distorted or biased, and even more common for us to distort those narratives even further when we relay them to other people.

I think the main problem facing Brian is a lack of self confidence. I think that's always been his problem. He has a fear of not living up to expectations, of disappointing people, or not making people happy, of being rejected, etc etc. I think that's his main problem, and that's why SMiLE was canned. Brian wasn't sure how his work would be taken by the public, and was hurt that it wasn't being well received by some of the people close to him. He slunk away. What he was doing required supreme confidence. Confidence is what makes great artists. The confidence to put radical, revealing material out into the world and have it criticized, interpreted, and analyzed by anyone and everyone. Brian didn't have that confidence, he was scared and he backed down at the critical juncture of his career.

WOW..Horses for courses..

[Dunderhead]

I don't really buy into the whole "just take things at face value/don't overthink it" type mentality. The ultimate goal of interpretation should be to know the author better than he knows himself. Everything must be considered. You have to look at the whole scene, you have to look at the slang.

It's long been suggested that language and thought are intimately bound. The fact that Brian spouted out stuff like "dig", "groovy", "far out", "our of sight", " hang up", "put on", "trip" needs to be properly accounted for. Brian used these words, and he used them in the "hip" way, in order to express psychedelic ideas. The fact that his vocabulary was in no-small part structured around psychedelic concepts and terminology would mean that when he conceptualized and constructed SMiLE, he did so using these psychedelic building blocks.

Right there in the goodbye surfing article, Brian says about Surf's Up stuff like "he's off on his trip...". For Brian Wilson 1966, "The Trip" had a whole philosophical underpinning to it, it's a sophisticated concept with a range of abstract meanings. He wasn't using it to just mean a drug high. When Brian was using all these words, he was picking up on psychedelic philosophy and bringing that into his way of thinking.

If you think this is all bs, it's not just me. These are just the ideas of some of the first people to deal with things like translation theory and linguistics. If you want to understand someone's ideas, you have to understand precisely how they used language. You have to do it from the perspective of their times. Brian was working in psychedelic lingo, and I think, conceptually, psychedelic ideas are at the core of what SMiLE was about.

[Mikie]

Hey, don't bogart that joint!  Pass it over, eh?  Whatever you guys are on, I want someothat.

[18thofMay]

I don't really buy into the whole "just take things at face value/don't overthink it" type mentality. The ultimate goal of interpretation should be to know the author better than he knows himself. Everything must be considered. You have to look at the whole scene, you have to look at the slang.

It's long been suggested that language and thought are intimately bound. The fact that Brian spouted out stuff like "dig", "groovy", "far out", "our of sight", " hang up", "put on", "trip" needs to be properly accounted for. Brian used these words, and he used them in the "hip" way, in order to express psychedelic ideas. The fact that his vocabulary was in no-small part structured around psychedelic concepts and terminology would mean that when he conceptualized and constructed SMiLE, he did so using these psychedelic building blocks.

Right there in the goodbye surfing article, Brian says about Surf's Up stuff like "he's off on his trip...". For Brian Wilson 1966, "The Trip" had a whole philosophical underpinning to it, it's a sophisticated concept with a range of abstract meanings. He wasn't using it to just mean a drug high. When Brian was using all these words, he was picking up on psychedelic philosophy and bringing that into his way of thinking.

If you think this is all bs, it's not just me. These are just the ideas of some of the first people to deal with things like translation theory and linguistics. If you want to understand someone's ideas, you have to understand precisely how they used language. You have to do it from the perspective of their times. Brian was working in psychedelic lingo, and I think, conceptually, psychedelic ideas are at the core of what SMiLE was about.

That's it I am done ..You are off your head!!

[Mahalo]

Brian didn't have that confidence, he was scared and he backed down at the critical juncture of his career.

...because he was high as a glow in the dark night-kite. Brian was doing drugs I wish I had done. Brian was riding on top of the Good Vibrations wave and was too dang stoned to realize what he was doing was great art...instead the drugs made him more concerned with the bull-merda of band politics, family paranoia, and self doubt. One can only do so much drugs before they start to have a negative effect....it is so obvious....SmileySmile anyone?

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Obviously my above dig at Salt Lake City was meant jokingly...aside from the song, which is on my short list of overrated BB songs!

[homeontherange]

I don't really buy into the whole "just take things at face value/don't overthink it" type mentality. The ultimate goal of interpretation should be to know the author better than he knows himself. Everything must be considered. You have to look at the whole scene, you have to look at the slang.

It's long been suggested that language and thought are intimately bound. The fact that Brian spouted out stuff like "dig", "groovy", "far out", "our of sight", " hang up", "put on", "trip" needs to be properly accounted for. Brian used these words, and he used them in the "hip" way, in order to express psychedelic ideas. The fact that his vocabulary was in no-small part structured around psychedelic concepts and terminology would mean that when he conceptualized and constructed SMiLE, he did so using these psychedelic building blocks.

Right there in the goodbye surfing article, Brian says about Surf's Up stuff like "he's off on his trip...". For Brian Wilson 1966, "The Trip" had a whole philosophical underpinning to it, it's a sophisticated concept with a range of abstract meanings. He wasn't using it to just mean a drug high. When Brian was using all these words, he was picking up on psychedelic philosophy and bringing that into his way of thinking.

If you think this is all bs, it's not just me. These are just the ideas of some of the first people to deal with things like translation theory and linguistics. If you want to understand someone's ideas, you have to understand precisely how they used language. You have to do it from the perspective of their times. Brian was working in psychedelic lingo, and I think, conceptually, psychedelic ideas are at the core of what SMiLE was about.

That's it I am done ..You are off your head!!

I don't understand why it's so difficult for some people to understand that Smile is a psychedelic record. Fishmonk isn't "off his head" at all

[The Shift]

Anyone trust this?

Gives a June 6 release date and an EMI catalogue number.

http://cdon.eu/music/beach_boys/the_smile_sessions_-_box_set-14166753

I have bought from this outfit before though not entirely satisfactorily – order took a loooong time to be despatched (in fact so long I assumed they'd cancelled the order and I bought a duplicate elsewhere which arrived within a couple of days) and proved surprisingly expensive despite free shipping.

[buddhahat]

Anyone trust this?

Gives a June 6 release date and an EMI catalogue number.

http://cdon.eu/music/beach_boys/the_smile_sessions_-_box_set-14166753

I have bought from this outfit before though not entirely satisfactorily – order took a loooong time to be despatched (in fact so long I assumed they'd cancelled the order and I bought a duplicate elsewhere which arrived within a couple of days) and proved surprisingly expensive despite free shipping.

The 6th of the 6th - 66? It's certainly a date relevant to Smile, and so could suggest it's an officially pegged date. Then again they could just be picking a date at random. Certainly interesting ...

Ignore my reasoning above. Just noticed it says "temporary release date" on the page. The catalogue number is intriguing though. They couldn't just make that up could they (?) so maybe some info has been released to retailers. It'll be interesting to see if any shops follow suit in the next few days.

[Cam Mott]

Yep, my opinion.

I didn't say drugs weren't involved, they were part of the boundslessness. Those opinions you quoted might be part of the over-exaggerated mythmaking in my opinion.  Not that they are trying to make a myth. Or I could be dead wrong.

Brian may have taken drugs, he has said he had some ideas under the influence that he didn't like sober, but he was operating at a high level not a "high" level when recording. He didn't not finish because he was stoned, he didn't finish because he ended up not liking it [not right for vocals, too elaborate, etc.]. If there are drug refs in SMiLE he ended up not liking those either.

[hypehat]

Anyone trust this?

Gives a June 6 release date and an EMI catalogue number.

http://cdon.eu/music/beach_boys/the_smile_sessions_-_box_set-14166753

I have bought from this outfit before though not entirely satisfactorily – order took a loooong time to be despatched (in fact so long I assumed they'd cancelled the order and I bought a duplicate elsewhere which arrived within a couple of days) and proved surprisingly expensive despite free shipping.

I'm not sure if I can trust it, but if it's true I will buy you a stiff drink for bringing it to my attention. 6th of June? Holy sh*t!