I think ALL THIS PROVES that SMiLE was to be an incredibly deep concept album that told a coherent story through repeated musical/conceptual/lyrical/visual symbolism.
For example the classic archetype of "Boy meets Girl" in "Good Vibrations" is retold in "Heroes and Villains" and retold in "Wonderful" from the girl's perspective. Who is this girl? Mother Nature? A Flower girl? Eve? Pocahontas? Lady Liberty? Brian's muse? She's all of these things! Who is this boy? A western outlaw? A Mayflower Pilgrim? An Okie heading to California to pick vegetables? The Old Paster Painter of the great American landscape? He is all these things...and Brian too! "Do You Like Worms" is Boy meets Girl retold as "Native American Garden of Eden meets Manifest Destiny". Imagery and ideas, particularly (en)light(enment) and air, appear and reappear through out Brian and Van's songs and Frank Holmes art. It is all one!
To that end I agree that one can hear in those instances how Brian was exploring the musical connections between CIFOTM and Dada. If Dada is the first word of a baby and represents water the source of all life, it makes sense to connect it with "Child is Father to the Man" a song about the spiritually rejuvenating properties of nature. Then, following the cycle of life from baby to child to man who's next? The Old Master Painter who created this beautiful world.....only he doesn't sing his song. He sings "you we're my sunshine"....and that's Brian's enlightening message: That mother nature is in danger but we can change course and get back to the garden. "Got to keep those good vibrations happening with her" !!!
Here's another theory. Why did Brian use the Crow's "Gee" in "Heroes and Villains" and also try to interpolate Etta James' "The Wallflower (Roll with Me Henry)" into "Wonderful" ? Boy meets Girl!
From Wikipedia: "Gee", released in June 1953 by The Crows, is a song which has been credited as the first rock and roll hit by a rock and roll group. And what is widely recognized as the first rock and roll hit by a female artist? You guessed it Etta James' "The Wallflower".
If you've read this far, THANKS!.....and please allow me to conduct a poll:
My organizing principal for SMiLE has always been that it is literally a chronological history of America told in flashback by the protagonist from Heroes and Villains: from the Native American Garden of Eden meeting the Pilgrims, thru the Industrial Revolution and Great Western Migration up to the environmentally/spiritually broken war machine Brian and Van were surveying from the sandbox in '66 as Carl's Vietnam draft notice showed up in the mail. Ahem....
So, the album begins with Prayer, then we meet our first protagonist in Heroes and Villains who quickly flashes back to tell us his story. Now, going strictly chronologically I've always put "Wonderful" next to begin in Native America (she belongs there left with her liberty). Her beautiful final fleeting notes are then rudely crashed in upon by the first British Invasion at Plymouth Rock of "Do You Like Worms".
But it's dawned on me that for the listener to recognize that the album is specifically about America it might be more immediately understood as such if "Heroes and Villains" is followed by "Do You Like Worms". The lyrics are more specifically about America than "Wonderful" and its variant of Brian's message "Heroes and villains just see what you've done to the church of the American Indian" is stated more explicitly. Followed by "Wonderful" it's as if it sets the stage (from Plymouth Rock to Hawaii) for the story we are about to hear about a boy bumping into a girl......
Well, I can't decide. They both work on paper, but if you were hearing the Beach Boys new album for the first time in the Spring of 1967 which sequence do you think would make the America connection most explicit?--
Heroes and Villains Pt. 1/ Wonderful/ Do You Like Worms
or
Heroes and Villains Pt.1/Do You Like Worms/Wonderful
Thanks in advance!!!
Man what a great post. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about putting Wonderful after H&V, but I’m gonna try it. Given that Wonderful has that jangly harpsichord feel that ‘You Still Believe In Me’ (and that song followed up the opener WIBN) i think such a song order would make sense in Smile too.
And perhaps since Smile is a collage of sorts, it would make sense that the story, to a first time listener, isn’t all too clear. They have to piece it together in a way that by the end makes perfect sense. So making Wonderful sandwich in between H&V and Worms would be my vote.
These last few posts here are great reading. Makes me miss the smile talk from 2011!