SMiLE was ready in 1967 - discuss

[WillJC]

I think the most clear and honest explanation of what happened to Smile might be what came straight from the horse's mouth when Brian talked about it in Jan '68: "We pulled out of that production pace merely because I was about ready to die. Y'know, I was trying so hard. And all of a sudden, I just decided not to try anymore, y'know, and not do such great things, and such big musical things. And we had so much fun. The Smiley Smile era was so great, it was unbelievable - personally, spiritually, everything. It was great. I didn't have any paranoiac feelings. No paranoia."

Brian's being sort of humble with the 'great things' line - we know from band members that he was still drilling them for hours on their vocal parts, producing everything at a very high level, and still creating complex, dynamic music that I wouldn't consider creatively diminished from what came before (and time has been very kind to Smiley Smile), but it's definitely a dramatic change in tone if not technical production approach, or the way he arranged things, which had been gradually brushing up to the essence of Smiley Smile over the previous months without quite making the leap to embracing that as an entire aesthetic. It's the laid-back, low-key, non-competitive thing. 'Music to cool out by'. Brian stopped chasing the charts and 'important music' acclaim from the rock press, dialled back his social circle to heal personal relationships in the family, and started making music efficiently and happily again for the first time since probably about October '66. Music that he wanted to make for himself, without the self-imposed pressure. There's another pretty enlightening quote from Brian in a magazine around March off the back of that lengthy stretch of Heroes sessions where he said he felt like he was "losing his talent", working harder than ever but getting less satisfying results. Carl also said more than once that Brian threw Smile away because he stopped getting any fulfilment out of it.

Mike has a quote in the Byron Preiss biography that I think does a really good job of understanding where he was at:

Brian took a benign, passive interest, instead of a dominating interest. At that time something had happened to his whole ego drive. It had been very powerful until the time of “Heroes and Villains’” release – he was about ready to come out with the Smile album and he was feeling very dynamic and creative and then something happened… chemically that completely shattered that – that made him the complete opposite…that made him want to withdraw… But he was always shy; he was too sensitive. There was a fine line and he went over that line… He was still creative though. Instead of Smile he did Smiley Smile. It was light, mellifluous, laid-back. It was dynamic in a passive sort of way, it was a revelation of where his psychology had gone to. It dropped out. He dropped out of that production race – the next big thing after Sgt. Pepper. Brian had lost interest in being aggressive and he went in the other direction – still creative, and different, but it wasn’t competitive.

[BJL]

I believe in a multiplicity of Smiles, and I have no interest in saying what is or is not legitimately Smile. Smile contains multitudes. Brian Wilson Presents Smile is absolutely, authentically, Smile. It sure as *hell* has a stronger claim to being Smile than the *imaginary version of Smile I, a fan, have created in my own mind!* And yet, it's also true that the Smile-of-the-mind which has been laid out in one of the multiple conversations that make up this long and polyphonic thread, is certainly more accurate, historically, to what Brian was aiming for in the fall of 1966 than Brian Wilson Presents Smile. These two facts are not in contradiction. They are just based on different ways of viewing the world. The historian versus the artist, perhaps, although it is certainly more complicated than that!

For what it's worth, the Smile that is most important to me, the most *real* Smile, the Smile closest to my heart, really, is the Smile Liz is talking about it, the Smile described by her tracklist! This, at least in my view, is the consensus-Smile of the 1990s. The Smile that Domenic Priore and countless other researchers and musicians put together through intensive effort, as they tried to understand and make sense of the bootlegs that were coming out in the last two decades of the 20th century. Those bootlegs, in turn, increasingly took on the shape of that research, until an album arose, in countless related permutations, that made musical and creative sense. This is the Smile I first encountered as a child. I think Liz is flat wrong that there is any possibility of this iteration of Smile representing something that existed in 1967. But I don't think Liz cares very much about that in the end. She is looking at all this from a different angle, and I'm *so* glad she shared her perspective here, because it is what seeded this whole amazing conversation; we've all been bouncing off of her provocations, and going in all kinds of interesting directions because of it. And if the parts of this thread that were the *most* interesting to me were, I suspect, the *least* interesting to Liz, well, that just says that we're two different people with different interests and different approaches to life and art.

As someone a few pages ago very insightfully pointed out, the 1990s Smile of countless bootlegs and Look, Listen, Vibrate, Smile (with Heroes and Villains up front and Cabinessence at the end of Side 1 and the elements leading us into Surf's Up), became an important model, in many respects, for Brian Wilson Presents Smile. And that fact, the fact of the original creator of the work incorporating aspects of the legend and incorporating some of the theories of fans into the work itself, is one of the most poetic and incredible facets of the whole Smile story. And then, in an even more poetic and cyclical and beautiful ending, the original 1966 and 67 recordings were edited into the rough template of Brian Wilson Presents Smile, becoming the first disc of the Smile Sessions. I suspect that the vast majority of future fans of this music will almost certainly start there, and get a version of Smile built on this whole incredible rich history. And that Smile, the 2011 Smile, is also legitimately Smile. It *is* Smile.

But there are other Smiles. What might Smile have been in December, 1966, that unknowable potential, is a Smile that obsesses me personally. This obsession leads me to a place of deep, deep interest in questions about what exactly was recorded when. Others here have little interest in this question, or don't even really see it as a question that makes sense, which is perfectly fine. But these Smiles are Smile too. What might Smile have been in March, 1967? What did Smile look like at the moment that it morphed into Smiley Smile? All these imaginary Smiles have worked their way into fan theories and fan mixes and bootlegs and contributed to the endless permutations of this music that make it such fertile and creative ground.

[sloopjohnb72]

Well said, BJL... it all matters!

There have been many angles to this conversation, and I think the lines have been blurred a bit. Objectively, Love to Say Da Da was not considered to be the "water element" in Brian's 1966-67 recordings, but also, In Blue Hawaii is presented as the "water element" on BWPS (although it's not explicitly stated as such). At some point long before BWPS was constructed, this interpretation of LTSDD as water came to be among fans. Now, it may have arisen out of misinterpretations of Brian's original plan... but that doesn't matter to some. The confusion, the misconceptions, the bootlegs, the fan mixes... they all started the Smile craze, and all the legend and the myth was incorporated into BWPS. Not to mention that the guy who assembled BWPS was a massive fan whose introduction to Smile was the bootlegs!

Now, I might not personally care all that much about BWPS, and the Beach Boys' 1960s recordings may really be all that truly matter to me, but different elements (pun intended) of Smile appeal to different people. So while track lists of bootlegs from the 80s and 90s don't reveal anything about Brian's initial vision (and we would be wrong in making such an argument) they do reveal something about the way that Smile has grown over the decades in the collective mind of the fans. THAT is what some people here are really interested in, and I think that we are debating about different Smiles at some point in this thread - no, LTSDD was not part of The Elements in 1967, but in 1998? Maybe! That's an interesting discussion itself! That is the stuff that's open to interpretation, which we can actually use the changing, evolving notion of Smile to understand.

[SMiLE Brian]

I am a semi- illiterate  poster but I appreciate this thread and everyone in it. SMiLE is great thing and I love everyone who will debate it.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Wasn’t there talk back in the mid 90s of a SMiLE computer program where you could mix your own, kinda like Todd Rundgren did, or am I having a moment?

[guitarfool2002]

Wasn’t there talk back in the mid 90s of a SMiLE computer program where you could mix your own, kinda like Todd Rundgren did, or am I having a moment?

"(Don) Was and Todd Rundgren have been encouraging him to convert all the 36-odd hours of Smile pieces to CD-ROM. "That would preserve the mystique, and be the only honest way to present it - Brian saying to the world 'I don't know how to finish it; You do it."

Pulse! magazine, November 1995, Brian and Van Dyke on the cover.

[BJL]

I think the most clear and honest explanation of what happened to Smile might be what came straight from the horse's mouth when Brian talked about it in Jan '68: "We pulled out of that production pace merely because I was about ready to die. Y'know, I was trying so hard. And all of a sudden, I just decided not to try anymore, y'know, and not do such great things, and such big musical things. And we had so much fun. The Smiley Smile era was so great, it was unbelievable - personally, spiritually, everything. It was great. I didn't have any paranoiac feelings. No paranoia."

Brian's being sort of humble with the 'great things' line - we know from band members that he was still drilling them for hours on their vocal parts, producing everything at a very high level, and still creating complex, dynamic music that I wouldn't consider creatively diminished from what came before (and time has been very kind to Smiley Smile), but it's definitely a dramatic change in tone if not technical production approach, or the way he arranged things, which had been gradually brushing up to the essence of Smiley Smile over the previous months without quite making the leap to embracing that as an entire aesthetic. It's the laid-back, low-key, non-competitive thing. 'Music to cool out by'. Brian stopped chasing the charts and 'important music' acclaim from the rock press, dialled back his social circle to heal personal relationships in the family, and started making music efficiently and happily again for the first time since probably about October '66. Music that he wanted to make for himself, without the self-imposed pressure. There's another pretty enlightening quote from Brian in a magazine around March off the back of that lengthy stretch of Heroes sessions where he said he felt like he was "losing his talent", working harder than ever but getting less satisfying results. Carl also said more than once that Brian threw Smile away because he stopped getting any fulfilment out of it.

Mike has a quote in the Byron Preiss biography that I think does a really good job of understanding where he was at:

Brian took a benign, passive interest, instead of a dominating interest. At that time something had happened to his whole ego drive. It had been very powerful until the time of “Heroes and Villains’” release – he was about ready to come out with the Smile album and he was feeling very dynamic and creative and then something happened… chemically that completely shattered that – that made him the complete opposite…that made him want to withdraw… But he was always shy; he was too sensitive. There was a fine line and he went over that line… He was still creative though. Instead of Smile he did Smiley Smile. It was light, mellifluous, laid-back. It was dynamic in a passive sort of way, it was a revelation of where his psychology had gone to. It dropped out. He dropped out of that production race – the next big thing after Sgt. Pepper. Brian had lost interest in being aggressive and he went in the other direction – still creative, and different, but it wasn’t competitive.

Man these quotes are so great. Thanks! That Mike quote is especially interesting, for some reason.

[BJL]

Objectively, Love to Say Da Da was not considered to be the "water element" in Brian's 1966-67 recordings, but also, In Blue Hawaii is presented as the "water element" on BWPS (although it's not explicitly stated as such). At some point long before BWPS was constructed, this interpretation of LTSDD as water came to be among fans.

I have a sincere question about this. Do you think that the evidence you're looking at actually shows that Love to Say Da Da was *not* considered to be the "water element?" Or does it just show that *there is no evidence* that Love to Say Da Da was the water element? Because *eventually* that music became associated with water, so merely in the absence of evidence, we wouldn't necessarily know when that association started in Brian's mind. Does that make sense?

While I was thinking about this I had a fun thought. We know that across Brian's career he constantly reused ideas. It definitely seems like more often than not, if Brian landed on a chord progression or feel or idea he liked, he'd quite possibly find a home for it eventually, maybe years later. Which made me think about that famous quote about "air" being a piano piece he never recorded. Given how we know Brian worked, doesn't it seem more likely than not that if Brian composed something he liked enough to include in his conception of the Elements, that eventually he probably would have come back to those ideas in some way shape or form and used them somewhere? And if you accept that, than it's more likely than not that we *have* heard the Air music. We just don't *know* we've heard it. We have know way of knowing where it ended up! It could be hiding anywhere, on any album from 1967 to the Paley Sessions!

Just a thought that tickled me

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Wasn’t there talk back in the mid 90s of a SMiLE computer program where you could mix your own, kinda like Todd Rundgren did, or am I having a moment?

"(Don) Was and Todd Rundgren have been encouraging him to convert all the 36-odd hours of Smile pieces to CD-ROM. "That would preserve the mystique, and be the only honest way to present it - Brian saying to the world 'I don't know how to finish it; You do it."

Pulse! magazine, November 1995, Brian and Van Dyke on the cover.

Ahhh thanks!

[sloopjohnb72]

Objectively, Love to Say Da Da was not considered to be the "water element" in Brian's 1966-67 recordings, but also, In Blue Hawaii is presented as the "water element" on BWPS (although it's not explicitly stated as such). At some point long before BWPS was constructed, this interpretation of LTSDD as water came to be among fans.

I have a sincere question about this. Do you think that the evidence you're looking at actually shows that Love to Say Da Da was *not* considered to be the "water element?" Or does it just show that *there is no evidence* that Love to Say Da Da was the water element? Because *eventually* that music became associated with water, so merely in the absence of evidence, we wouldn't necessarily know when that association started in Brian's mind. Does that make sense?

While I was thinking about this I had a fun thought. We know that across Brian's career he constantly reused ideas. It definitely seems like more often than not, if Brian landed on a chord progression or feel or idea he liked, he'd quite possibly find a home for it eventually, maybe years later. Which made me think about that famous quote about "air" being a piano piece he never recorded. Given how we know Brian worked, doesn't it seem more likely than not that if Brian composed something he liked enough to include in his conception of the Elements, that eventually he probably would have come back to those ideas in some way shape or form and used them somewhere? And if you accept that, than it's more likely than not that we *have* heard the Air music. We just don't *know* we've heard it. We have know way of knowing where it ended up! It could be hiding anywhere, on any album from 1967 to the Paley Sessions!

Just a thought that tickled me

Very good question, and thanks for asking! Certainly the latter, and I think the former statement is also something that we can say with near certainty.

In the case of Love to Say Da Da, here are some very specific details on exactly what evidence exists. The song was tracked in December, and engineered at Columbia by Jerry Hochman, which we know via the handwriting on the tape box. Jerry wrote the song down as "Da Da", which you might argue was the original title, but "Worms" is also written on the same box (as the verse section was placed on the same reel), and that's obviously shorthand. So possibly, LTSDD's full title existed from the beginning. Let me explain the context of these sessions a little bit more - on December 27 and 28, Brian was working on Heroes, and these were the first dates that the song was officially incorporated with what were previously the choruses of Do You Like Worms (bicycle rider) and Cabin Essence (iron horse), which were now bridges of Heroes. Brian was working on his own, so the work here was limited to lead vocals and mixing, which was achieved for the Heroes verse and bicycle rider, and just mixing for iron horse (all necessary vocals were in place). He also worked on Wonderful in some capacity, possibly recording a new lead vocal, creating a new mono mix, or both. Either way, that work is lost to time. Wonderful was possibly a B-side for Heroes at this point.

But he also did these Da Da tracks, and the song appeared to be in 3 sections - the DYLW verse (a section from a dead song, which was now an intro for a new piece - note the similarities in arrangement/feel and harmonic rhythm to the later LTSDD part 1), the Rhodes section, and the taped piano section. Recorded in the same modular fashion as many Smile songs by this point. As DYLW had effectively been killed off for the sake of Heroes, this appears to be an attempt to fill the hole that Brian had created in the project. This is why I agree with you that Smile was a salvageable project by the end of 1966 - Brian, at first, seemed to be a lot more careful in his destruction of other songs, by either letting them work without the section he used for Heroes (Cabin Essence was to be chorus-less by now) or writing a new song to incorporate the remaining pieces. Later, he would give no thought to this destruction, and it would rule out a great number of compositions from being included on the album.

On the composition itself - both Stephen Desper and Marilyn have commented about the song's subject matter being babies. Although Stephen did not directly engineer anything related to the song before it was CCW, he and Carl listened back to the tapes in attempts to revive the material a few times. Marilyn recalled that when Brian wrote this, he was sucking chocolate milk out of a baby bottle while playing the piano. You know, classic 1966 Brian Wilson stuff. This jives with everything about the song in both of its forms. The title is in reference to baby sounds, and the only vocals that were recorded for the May version are "a wah wah ho wah." It's a very Smile-ish little chant, but the syllables are definitely an intentional reference to baby sounds. I believe Desper called it something close to "baby sounds set to music." That is what the song was, and the fact that the edited sections of each version of the song (even the May production, which judging by the cancelled May 19 session, would have had at least one more piece) reach a length comparable to many of Brian's other Smile songs, seems to confirm that it was its own thing. The title being used consistently, with subtitles within that title (part 1, part 2, second day), essentially means that this was a song called Love to Say Da Da. Moreover, when you hear the Fire music... how evocative is that? You can practically see the fire. With Da Da? None of the musical cues imply a single thing about water. It's a baby song.

And how about the Elements side of things? Well, we actually do know about some of Brian's plans for the water section, and I'm surprised I haven't brought this up already. Michael Vosse has explained on a few occasions that he was sent out to make recordings of water, which he did actually do. Vosse told researcher Cam Mott that Brian planned to sample these sounds and use them as "notes" in some form, somehow. This was most likely in November, before the Fire section was recorded, and all the Elements plans went topsy turvy. But there were concrete plans for water; according to Brian, there was a written piece for air, and as we know, Fire was recorded. Earth was probably not far behind. But, beyond fire, nothing actually happened in the studio for The Elements. Things moved forward.

And to address the Cool, Cool Water connection - yes, it's nearly undeniable that Brian revived some old Elements ideas for this! In fact, Stephen Desper was told to do the same thing as Michael Vosse regarding water sounds, now for the purpose of CCW rather than The Elements. And he actually went above and beyond and physically created a keyboard of water sounds, which Brian wanted to use... and then just didn't. Brian, have some respect for the hard working engineers of the world! But yes, there are traces of The Elements in Cool, Cool Water, and of course, the music is based on Love to Say Da Da.

However, the transitive property doesn't apply here, and this is true of a lot of these connections that Brian has made in his music over the years. He reuses ideas, but he also combines a multitude of old, once unrelated ideas, into something new. This is something that the "LTSDD is water" originators failed to consider, but we can see it now in not just CCW, but a lot of tunes that came out of Smile material. Wind Chimes on Smiley Smile contains the melody and lyrics of... well, Wind Chimes, but the fade is the same music as Holidays! Does that mean Holidays and Wind Chimes were initially related? Nope, totally separate recordings, both their own songs, with ideas later combined in a new way. Same goes for dozens of variations of Heroes and Villains, and that's kind of where this really started to happen often - songs that were initially separate tracks being combined as one. It's a way to revive several incomplete ideas in a fresh way, without the need to use up more original music, and it's sort of beautiful, although destructive at times. This goes farther back than Smile, too. It's part of the essence of Brian's writing style, and it's a tool that never seemed to leave his "bag of tricks". He could be combining two unfinished songs as I type this.

Hope that helps!

[sloopjohnb72]

Now, there's another possibility here to consider...

What if Love to Say Da Da came from the Water element? What if Brian intended to record the exact same chord progression, maybe even with the June CCW vocal arrangement on top, and later turned it into LTSDD when the Elements went south? Well, that's a possibility to consider, and we can say that there's no evidence that it's true, but we can't necessarily disprove it.

However, I have a few reasons to doubt this. And yes, I know it's a theory I just invented that no one has even made. But I want to address this before anyone else brings it up.

Fire was, in part, a studio creation. Brian's friends at the session implied that he had just conceived the music immediately before, and much of the identifying "sound" of the record comes from the arrangement. Otherwise, it is a two chord vamp with a harmonized bass line, and that's all Brian really could have done, physically, on a piano. The water plans, as I've read Cam Mott's research on them over the years, seemed to be pretty vague. It sounds like Brian had a really cool idea for a concept, but that he had not yet written a piece of music that he would have put those water sounds to. Bringing back the "water keyboard" in the Desper era seems more like remembering an old concept rather than remembering the initial plan for what became another song. I'm not making any objective claim here, but it really does seem like "The Elements" was a more conceptual conception, rather than something Brian planned out one evening in full on a piano. That is probably a large part of why it fell apart so much faster, and in such a less complete form, than other Smile songs.

When Marilyn described Brian's bizarre ritual in writing LTSDD, it sounds like he was actually writing music on his Chickering grand - not repurposing pre-existing music to new vocal riffs. You can't even perform the vocal parts while you're sucking down chocolate milk, can you?

Moreover, throughout October 1966-July 1967, Brian was simply not a backwards thinker. Plans changed all of the time, but they always moved into something new. Old ideas that had already been abandoned were hardly ever revisited in their exact original form. Brian liked playing with the puzzle pieces floating around in his head, but making the same puzzle twice is boring. He never did it.

Also, Brian did say that he wrote Cool Cool Water in the new Bellagio house in March of 1967, as Liz pointed out earlier in the thread. Of course, he's off by a few months, but he remembers the song as a new creation in a new place, away from the Smile music of the past, although it's founded upon two essential pieces of Smile music. For what it's worth, when Bob Harris asked Brian in 1976 if anything on Sunflower was Smile material, he said no.

So, in short...

Is Love to Say Da Da (in either of its recording forms, under that title) the water element? No.

Did Love to Say Da Da come from ideas for the water element? Possible, but highly unlikely, given all of the above.

Did Love to Say Da Da later fuse with original ideas for the water element? Yes! This is Cool, Cool Water - not something that ever existed while Brian was working on an album called Smile, but it's a beautiful, cute little song that rose from the ashes.

[Angela Jones]

Now, there's another possibility here to consider...

What if Love to Say Da Da came from the Water element? What if Brian intended to record the exact same chord progression, maybe even with the June CCW vocal arrangement on top, and later turned it into LTSDD when the Elements went south? Well, that's a possibility to consider, and we can say that there's no evidence that it's true, but we can't necessarily disprove it.

However, I have a few reasons to doubt this. And yes, I know it's a theory I just invented that no one has even made. But I want to address this before anyone else brings it up.

Fire was, in part, a studio creation. Brian's friends at the session implied that he had just conceived the music immediately before, and much of the identifying "sound" of the record comes from the arrangement. Otherwise, it is a two chord vamp with a harmonized bass line, and that's all Brian really could have done, physically, on a piano. The water plans, as I've read Cam Mott's research on them over the years, seemed to be pretty vague. It sounds like Brian had a really cool idea for a concept, but that he had not yet written a piece of music that he would have put those water sounds to. Bringing back the "water keyboard" in the Desper era seems more like remembering an old concept rather than remembering the initial plan for what became another song. I'm not making any objective claim here, but it really does seem like "The Elements" was a more conceptual conception, rather than something Brian planned out one evening in full on a piano. That is probably a large part of why it fell apart so much faster, and in such a less complete form, than other Smile songs.

When Marilyn described Brian's bizarre ritual in writing LTSDD, it sounds like he was actually writing music on his Chickering grand - not repurposing pre-existing music to new vocal riffs. You can't even perform the vocal parts while you're sucking down chocolate milk, can you?

Moreover, throughout October 1966-July 1967, Brian was simply not a backwards thinker. Plans changed all of the time, but they always moved into something new. Old ideas that had already been abandoned were hardly ever revisited in their exact original form. Brian liked playing with the puzzle pieces floating around in his head, but making the same puzzle twice is boring. He never did it.

So, in short...

Is Love to Say Da Da (in either of its recording forms, under that title) the water element? No.

Did Love to Say Da Da come from ideas for the water element? Possible, but highly unlikely, given all of the above.

Did Love to Say Da Da later fuse with original ideas for the water element? Yes! This is Cool, Cool Water - not something that ever existed while Brian was working on an album called Smile, but it's a beautiful, cute little song that rose from the ashes.

It's not whether some bootlegs show Love to Say Dada as Water. The things that suggest it to me are the chant in Dada. As I've already pointed out, an article called SMiLE, Hawaii: Not Gibberish After All pointed out that the chant is not meaningless. Some spell it 'Wa Wa Ho Wa', other times it can be shown as 'Wai'. 'Wa' can be youth, 'wai' = WATER. (I believe it's 'wai' in The Surf Sessions notes.)

Dada was worked on between 16-18 May 1967. Cool Cool Water June 7th 1967. Less than 3 weeks between them. That doesn't prove it, of course. Suggests a 'maybe'.

[sloopjohnb72]

Angela, a fan's interpretation of a song is just that - a fan's interpretation. That's fun, and I do love that kind of thing. I encourage it really, even when I have a different interpretation! We can all add letters to the syllables that Brian sings, in order to create some justification for the way we wish to view it. But this does not actually say anything about Brian's plans, and if a fan theory is contradicted by detailed reports about the song from people who were literally in the room with Brian while it was being written, well, that should be obvious.

[Angela Jones]

It's bedtime, but I'm going to say one last thing, a little bit of a change in topic, but I've been thinking about Smile all evening and I want to say it.

Smile was not finished, not in 1967 and not in 2004. But I believe it was close enough, that we have enough of it, to understand, conceptually, intellectually, and also in our hearts, what a finished Smile would have been, what it would have meant. Good Vibrations, Cabinessence, Wonderful, we have these songs in versions that are, for all intents and purposes, finished. The first two minutes of Surf's Up with Brian's vocal on the 1966 backing track. It is not hard to imagine a version of Surf's Up in which all three movements are produced to the level of that first section. It is not hard to imagine A Do You Like Worms finished to the level of Cabinessence, or the Fire Music brought to the level of Good Vibrations, howling, roaring, perfectly produced. I can imagine that album. Sometimes, late at night, with the lights off, sitting in silence, I can almost *hear* it.

And I believe, with all of my heart, that that album, that the album Brian Wilson came *this close* to finishing in December of 1966, would have been one of the great achievements of the human mind. That it would have stood alongside Van Eyck's Ghent Alterpiece and Michelangelo's Last Judgment and the Elgin Marbles and the Benin Bronzes, alongside Beethoven's late period and Bach's organ music and New Orleans jazz, against Einstein's theory of relativity and Tolstoy's novels. Pet Sounds is my favorite album of all time, but I'm not sure it belongs on that list, not really. Honestly, there is not a single piece of popular music recorded in the 1960s that, in my opinion, belongs on that list, that belongs among *the greatest creative acts of human civilization.* But that is what I hear in the Smile music. A bid for *that* list. That list of human invention and creative potential pushed to the absolute limit.

And so I love Smiley Smile, I really, really do. But f*** Smiley Smile. Smiley Smile is a great album. It's not Smile. Nothing is Smile, nothing can replace that incomprehensible loss, not how I see it.

Quoting this to repeat it. Love it. You could do a different SMiLE every year because the music lends itself to rearrangement, bits appear in more than one context and the lyrics also contain puns and double meanings. 'Van Dyke Parks states in a filmed conversation with Brian Wilson (Leaf, 2004) that together with SMiLE, they inadvertently created the world’s first ‘interactive’ album' so the fans have contributed to this too.

[Angela Jones]

Angela, a fan's interpretation of a song is just that - a fan's interpretation. That's fun, and I do love that kind of thing. I encourage it really, even when I have a different interpretation! We can all add letters to the syllables that Brian sings, in order to create some justification for the way we wish to view it. But this does not actually say anything about Brian's plans, and if a fan theory is contradicted by detailed reports about the song from people who were literally in the room with Brian while it was being written, well, that should be obvious.

I'm quoting the chant. I didn't write those words. I looked them up in a Hawaiian dictionary.

[Galaxy Liz]

Angela, a fan's interpretation of a song is just that - a fan's interpretation. That's fun, and I do love that kind of thing. I encourage it really, even when I have a different interpretation! We can all add letters to the syllables that Brian sings, in order to create some justification for the way we wish to view it. But this does not actually say anything about Brian's plans, and if a fan theory is contradicted by detailed reports about the song from people who were literally in the room with Brian while it was being written, well, that should be obvious.

VDP wasn't a fan he was the lyricist and collaborator.  If he had written in Italian presumably you would have translated that.  This is VDP we are talking about this is not accidental.

[sloopjohnb72]

The fan that I am referring to is the author of this article who came forward with this interpretation. The "lyric" in question was written by Brian Wilson, not Van Dyke Parks. Anyone's interpretation of this line is valid, and can be used to explain LTSDD as anything they want, as Smile is an interpretive piece of work that means something different to everybody. But nobody's personal interpretation proves that objective truths are untruths, or that Marilyn was hallucinating everything that she saw and heard when her husband wrote the song (although, I would probably think I was hallucinating if I were her! ).

Hope this makes sense.

[Angela Jones]

The fan that I am referring to is the author of this article who came forward with this interpretation. The "lyric" in question was written by Brian Wilson, not Van Dyke Parks. Anyone's interpretation of this line is valid, and can be used to explain LTSDD as anything they want, as Smile is an interpretive piece of work that means something different to everybody. But nobody's personal interpretation proves that objective truths are untruths, or that Marilyn was hallucinating everything that she saw and heard when her husband wrote the song (although, I would probably think I was hallucinating if I were her! ).

Hope this makes sense.

The interpretation I was going by was a dictionary definition. Although I got the idea from the article, I got the definition from a Hawaiian dictionary. It could be coincidental I suppose!

[Galaxy Liz]

I think many of you are rather misunderstanding the creative process. This will obviously differ from person to person and start in different ways and in a different order but a huge part of it is working out the form and linking the individual ideas which have been triggered in your head.  You have to then find out which things are realisable and which parts are not and rework in other ways the parts which are not.  The whole thing remains in flux right until the final moment and even then it is difficult to know when to stop and when it is finished.  

Perpetuating the notion that Brian was not moving things around and that there was a recipe which Brian followed strictly is not just wrong, it's provably wrong.  I don't know that Da Da was always intended to be the water ritual that brought Brian back from death in his LSD trip so is combined with the cries of a new born or if that is just the elegant culmination.  It may have been one of those happy accidents that turned it into this but VDP is the master of double meaning and esoteric knowledge and I find belittling his skill to prove a small and relatively insignificant point an irritation especially since I would think this is one place where his skill would be appreciated.  We also don't know exactly what Brian thought Da Da was - he may always have had the idea of using it as water and may have written CCW to combine with it deliberately since they match quite well and since that is actually what he did with it for a time until he decided he didn't like it.  This is more undocumented information which we will never know the answer to, because even if you could ask Brian, he may not remember, may have some motive for distorting the truth or may not know what his unconscious may have been swilling about.

So what is written on the tape boxes, while helpful in identifying what they thought they were recording at the time, does not tell you what it morphed into nor how Brian intended to overlay these pieces or if they may be used in more than one place.  

We don't think that this was ever completed in the way he wanted to do it and no doubt BWPS would have been different to the original.  Yes, the fans versions are interesting and a build your own Smile would be interesting (the fans versions because they are continuous sometimes highlight the beauty over looked in the individual themes when we are all working out how to put it together) so they do have a purpose but when I spoke about the way the listener hears and interprets the music I was not so much talking about them creating their own version but their response to the music created by the composer - it effects all people individually and triggers memories and knowledge of which the composer was unaware.  Some people like me and Brian may think that is deliberate but that might be a bit woo woo for most of you.  

I am sure that WilJC is right that Brian was struggling to complete it and it was an enormous burden lifted from his shoulders but he also said 'if you don't want to progress you shouldn't live' and did his damnest to put himself out of conscious thought for a good few years.  And you have to ask yourself why it became such a huge burden and the answer is surely that rather than having any help he was being fought with.  It was a difficult project to start with but when your collaborator has been chased away and you have to fight everyone to get anything done you might just throw the towel in.

We listened to an old pod cast by Mark Dillion last night in which he gave his ordered version of the album and many of his ideas were interesting.  Whilst we all knew of the various themes which were supposed to be included in the album I had not realised that the westward expansion in the album was geographically sequential and that The Elements and life cycle are all sequential within it too - or at least they could be:  the site of the Chicago fire being further east than than the pool and waterfall in Hawaii for instance.  If this is what was intended it ought to be possible to work out what the exact sequence should be.  I don't know where this would place Surf's Up given that VDP based it on a French book but surfing was a sacred activity in Hawaii and we finish with Song for Children which seems from the coda of the first recording to be intended from the start (irrespective of what Rieley claimed) so it finishes on a good old zen idea of reincarnation.

[Galaxy Liz]

I think many of you are rather misunderstanding the creative process. This will obviously differ from person to person and start in different ways and in a different order but a huge part of it is working out the form and linking the individual ideas which have been triggered in your head.  You have to then find out which things are realisable and which parts are not and rework in other ways the parts which are not.  The whole thing remains in flux right until the final moment and even then it is difficult to know when to stop and when it is finished.  

Perpetuating the notion that Brian was not moving things around and that there was a recipe which Brian followed strictly is not just wrong, it's provably wrong.  I don't know that Da Da was always intended to be the water ritual that brought Brian back from death in his LSD trip so is combined with the cries of a new born or if that is just the elegant culmination.  It may have been one of those happy accidents that turned it into this but VDP is the master of double meaning and esoteric knowledge and I find belittling his skill to prove a small and relatively insignificant point an irritation especially since I would think this is one place where his skill would be appreciated.  We also don't know exactly what Brian thought Da Da was - he may always have had the idea of using it as water and may have written CCW to combine with it deliberately since they match quite well and since that is actually what he did with it for a time until he decided he didn't like it.  This is more undocumented information which we will never know the answer to, because even if you could ask Brian, he may not remember, may have some motive for distorting the truth or may not know what his unconscious may have been swilling about.

So what is written on the tape boxes, while helpful in identifying what they thought they were recording at the time, does not tell you what it morphed into nor how Brian intended to overlay these pieces or if they may be used in more than one place.  

We don't think that this was ever completed in the way he wanted to do it and no doubt BWPS would have been different to the original.  Yes, the fans versions are interesting and a build your own Smile would be interesting (the fans versions because they are continuous sometimes highlight the beauty over looked in the individual themes when we are all working out how to put it together) so they do have a purpose but when I spoke about the way the listener hears and interprets the music I was not so much talking about them creating their own version but their response to the music created by the composer - it effects all people individually and triggers memories and knowledge of which the composer was unaware.  Some people like me and Brian may think that is deliberate but that might be a bit woo woo for most of you.  

I am sure that WilJC is right that Brian was struggling to complete it and it was an enormous burden lifted from his shoulders but he also said 'if you don't want to progress you shouldn't live' and did his damnest to put himself out of conscious thought for a good few years.  And you have to ask yourself why it became such a huge burden and the answer is surely that rather than having any help he was being fought with.  It was a difficult project to start with but when your collaborator has been chased away and you have to fight everyone to get anything done you might just throw the towel in.

We listened to an old pod cast by Mark Dillion last night in which he gave his ordered version of the album and many of his ideas were interesting.  Whilst we all knew of the various themes which were supposed to be included in the album I had not realised that the westward expansion in the album was geographically sequential and that The Elements and life cycle are all sequential within it too - or at least they could be:  the site of the Chicago fire being further east than than the pool and waterfall in Hawaii for instance.  If this is what was intended it ought to be possible to work out what the exact sequence should be.  I don't know where this would place Surf's Up given that VDP based it on a French book but surfing was a sacred activity in Hawaii and we finish with Song for Children which seems from the coda of the first recording to be intended from the start (irrespective of what Rieley claimed) so it finishes on a good old zen idea of reincarnation thus bringing it full circle.

[Zenobi]

I think there are no fewer than six SMiLEs around.

1) BWPS: the completed album by Brian, Van, Darian and the BW Band.
2) Smiley Smile: as Angela said, SMiLE's shadow, which I consider a work of unfathomable fascination.
3) The Beach Boys SMiLE album: constructed in 2011 on the blueprint of BWPS.
4) The ensemble of the sessions, immensely rich and beautiful.
5) The collective SMiLE "project", created and mantained by the fans.
6) The ensemble of all the previous, and more: SMiLE the myth and legend (with a lot of reality, though).
 

[Galaxy Liz]

I think many of you are rather misunderstanding the creative process. This will obviously differ from person to person and start in different ways and in a different order but a huge part of it is working out the form and linking the individual ideas which have been triggered in your head.  You have to then find out which things are realisable and which parts are not and rework in other ways the parts which are not.  The whole thing remains in flux right until the final moment and even then it is difficult to know when to stop and when it is finished.  

Perpetuating the notion that Brian was not moving things around and that there was a recipe which Brian followed strictly is not just wrong, it's provably wrong.  I don't know that Da Da was always intended to be the water ritual that brought Brian back from death in his LSD trip so is combined with the cries of a new born or if that is just the elegant culmination.  It may have been one of those happy accidents that turned it into this but VDP is the master of double meaning and esoteric knowledge and I find belittling his skill to prove a small and relatively insignificant point an irritation especially since I would think this is one place where his skill would be appreciated.  We also don't know exactly what Brian thought Da Da was - he may always have had the idea of using it as water and may have written CCW to combine with it deliberately since they match quite well and since that is actually what he did with it for a time until he decided he didn't like it.  This is more undocumented information which we will never know the answer to, because even if you could ask Brian, he may not remember, may have some motive for distorting the truth or may not know what his unconscious may have been swilling about.

So what is written on the tape boxes, while helpful in identifying what they thought they were recording at the time, does not tell you what it morphed into nor how Brian intended to overlay these pieces or if they may be used in more than one place.  

We don't think that this was ever completed in the way he wanted to do it and no doubt BWPS would have been different to the original.  Yes, the fans versions are interesting and a build your own Smile would be interesting (the fans versions because they are continuous sometimes highlight the beauty over looked in the individual themes when we are all working out how to put it together) so they do have a purpose but when I spoke about the way the listener hears and interprets the music I was not so much talking about them creating their own version but their response to the music created by the composer - it effects all people individually and triggers memories and knowledge of which the composer was unaware.  Some people like me and Brian may think that is deliberate but that might be a bit woo woo for most of you.  

I am sure that WilJC is right that Brian was struggling to complete it and it was an enormous burden lifted from his shoulders but he also said 'if you don't want to progress you shouldn't live' and did his damnest to put himself out of conscious thought for a good few years.  And you have to ask yourself why it became such a huge burden and the answer is surely that rather than having any help he was being fought with.  It was a difficult project to start with but when your collaborator has been chased away and you have to fight everyone to get anything done you might just throw the towel in.

We listened to an old pod cast by Mark Dillion last night in which he gave his ordered version of the album and many of his ideas were interesting.  Whilst we all knew of the various themes which were supposed to be included in the album I had not realised that the westward expansion in the album was geographically sequential and that The Elements and life cycle are all sequential within it too - or at least they could be:  the site of the Chicago fire being further east than than the pool and waterfall in Hawaii for instance.  If this is what was intended it ought to be possible to work out what the exact sequence should be.  (Just looked into this some more and I don't think it will work) I don't know where this would place Surf's Up given that VDP based it on a French book but surfing was a sacred activity in Hawaii and we finish with Song for Children which seems from the coda of the first recording to be intended from the start (irrespective of what Rieley claimed) so it finishes on a good old zen idea of reincarnation.

[sloopjohnb72]

So what is written on the tape boxes, while helpful in identifying what they thought they were recording at the time, does not tell you what it morphed into nor how Brian intended to overlay these pieces or if they may be used in more than one place.

Objectively, it does.

If Brian Wilson made an edit, then an edit was made by Brian Wilson. There are literal, physical thing he did to the music that are known. People are asking about these things, and I am answering.

Sometimes, these facts disagree with our own, personal "Smile". That is ok. But it does not change the facts, nor does it diminish their implications.

Someone asked me about objective truths surrounding Brian's plans for Love to Say Da Da, and I laid them out. You're not a fan of the facts and that's ok, but they cannot be publicly denied just because someone's interpretation is contradicted by the truths of the music. An interpretation, which, as I've made clear, is contradictory to what Marilyn Wilson, Carl Wilson, and Stephen Desper have all individually explained what the song is about, and which is founded upon misinformation itself (I am once again letting you know that Van Dyke Parks was not creatively involved with LTSDD).

If you want to make the argument that LTSDD works better on Smile as the water element, then by all means, make that argument and I won't stop ya! But if you want to make the argument that several people closely involved with the Smile album were all individually lying about Brian's plans for both LTSDD and the water element, and this is "proven" because some guy wrote an opinion piece about what the song means which you prefer, well, I hope you at least see how the logic isn't there.

[Don Malcolm]

Objectively, Love to Say Da Da was not considered to be the "water element" in Brian's 1966-67 recordings, but also, In Blue Hawaii is presented as the "water element" on BWPS (although it's not explicitly stated as such). At some point long before BWPS was constructed, this interpretation of LTSDD as water came to be among fans.

I have a sincere question about this. Do you think that the evidence you're looking at actually shows that Love to Say Da Da was *not* considered to be the "water element?" Or does it just show that *there is no evidence* that Love to Say Da Da was the water element? Because *eventually* that music became associated with water, so merely in the absence of evidence, we wouldn't necessarily know when that association started in Brian's mind. Does that make sense?

While I was thinking about this I had a fun thought. We know that across Brian's career he constantly reused ideas. It definitely seems like more often than not, if Brian landed on a chord progression or feel or idea he liked, he'd quite possibly find a home for it eventually, maybe years later. Which made me think about that famous quote about "air" being a piano piece he never recorded. Given how we know Brian worked, doesn't it seem more likely than not that if Brian composed something he liked enough to include in his conception of the Elements, that eventually he probably would have come back to those ideas in some way shape or form and used them somewhere? And if you accept that, than it's more likely than not that we *have* heard the Air music. We just don't *know* we've heard it. We have know way of knowing where it ended up! It could be hiding anywhere, on any album from 1967 to the Paley Sessions!

Just a thought that tickled me

Very good question, and thanks for asking! Certainly the latter, and I think the former statement is also something that we can say with near certainty.

Let me explain the context of these sessions a little bit more - on December 27 and 28, Brian was working on Heroes, and these were the first dates that the song was officially incorporated with what were previously the choruses of Do You Like Worms (bicycle rider) and Cabin Essence (iron horse), which were now bridges of Heroes. Brian was working on his own, so the work here was limited to lead vocals and mixing, which was achieved for the Heroes verse and bicycle rider, and just mixing for iron horse (all necessary vocals were in place). He also worked on Wonderful in some capacity, possibly recording a new lead vocal, creating a new mono mix, or both. Either way, that work is lost to time. Wonderful was possibly a B-side for Heroes at this point.

But he also did these Da Da tracks, and the song appeared to be in 3 sections - the DYLW verse (a section from a dead song, which was now an intro for a new piece - note the similarities in arrangement/feel and harmonic rhythm to the later LTSDD part 1), the Rhodes section, and the taped piano section. Recorded in the same modular fashion as many Smile songs by this point. As DYLW had effectively been killed off for the sake of Heroes, this appears to be an attempt to fill the hole that Brian had created in the project. This is why I agree with you that Smile was a salvageable project by the end of 1966 - Brian, at first, seemed to be a lot more careful in his destruction of other songs, by either letting them work without the section he used for Heroes (Cabin Essence was to be chorus-less by now) or writing a new song to incorporate the remaining pieces. Later, he would give no thought to this destruction, and it would rule out a great number of compositions from being included on the album.

Wind Chimes on Smiley Smile contains the melody and lyrics of... well, Wind Chimes, but the fade is the same music as Holidays! Does that mean Holidays and Wind Chimes were initially related? Nope, totally separate recordings, both their own songs, with ideas later combined in a new way. Same goes for dozens of variations of Heroes and Villains, and that's kind of where this really started to happen often - songs that were initially separate tracks being combined as one. It's a way to revive several incomplete ideas in a fresh way, without the need to use up more original music, and it's sort of beautiful, although destructive at times. This goes farther back than Smile, too. It's part of the essence of Brian's writing style, and it's a tool that never seemed to leave his "bag of tricks". He could be combining two unfinished songs as I type this.

This portion in the reply gets toward the core of what folks were reporting as early as Paul Williams' interview with David Anderle, where such switching around of parts was discussed as part of the project becoming stuck in its own gears, so to speak. But, having made those changes in an attempt to create a more "grandiose" version of H&V, and then leaving that by the roadside as well, we are really at the point where Brian could have conceivably gone back after he'd decided exactly what *was* going to be the released version of H&V (the single version that wound up on SMILEY) and restored the portions of the other songs that wound up being unused.

Which leads to the question of how and why "Cabinessence" was released, and how it was (apparently) found in an intact version using the sequence that was strung together earlier in December 1966. The "how" I think that the mega-scholars of SMiLE can easily cover, but the "why" is something that leads back into the area of inquiry that you folks really seem loath to discuss here. The fact that Brian felt happier (for a time) while he was putting SMILEY together is hardly surprising: given the intractable intensity he'd been dealing with during the previous month, a condition that had literally brought his prodigious work process to a halt, a resolution to the creative and interpersonal impasse that had been plaguing him must have been greeted with a sense of (creative) euphoria. (There are, however, audible examples of some "pain and strain" in the process, as manifested in the UM bootleg disk for SMILEY; as much of a sense of relief at having a way out of the earlier impasse might have propelled the project, it still had to be gotten through, and underlying it had to be a sense that the band wasn't going to escape from critical and commercial backlash once the LP was released.)

But the problem was that it didn't last but another nine months, and in the real world the LPs that came out as a result of this temporary rejuvenation did not re-establish the Beach Boys as a top-of-the-line commercial entity (no matter how much we may love them now). And that clearly came back into the picture in mid-1968, when it appears that Brian hits another, different kind of creative wall--more akin to "writer's block" than "too many options". All of which eventually leads back to the question: why was "Cabinessence" (in its original configuration) revisited by Carl and Dennis and prepared for release on 20/20? What triggered the decision to do that? Was it some kind of end play by the band to ensure that the SMiLE material would not be something that Brian could revisit? Did they think that those two tracks would sell more records if they were included? (Not remembering any type of publicity campaign by Capitol trumpeting the presence of "lost SMiLE tracks"--that would take another two years to occur, when the band's commercial situation in America was even more problematic than was the case in the fall of '68.)

Was there some kind of internal tug-of-war that played out regarding what Brian could/could not do? The Redwood incident may only be the most visible manifestation of such a process that unfolded over that period. What we go from is a memo from Engemann where Brian seems on board with a 10-track version of SMiLE to be issued on Brother Records which can still use the booklet, to a situation where two tracks from SMiLE end up on a subsequent LP two years later that is back on Capitol. While these matters may not be as alluring to those who want to focus on the musical puzzles, they are fallout results from a series of after-events stemming from the music that (arguably, at least) need just as much attention from researchers.

[Galaxy Liz]

So what is written on the tape boxes, while helpful in identifying what they thought they were recording at the time, does not tell you what it morphed into nor how Brian intended to overlay these pieces or if they may be used in more than one place.

Objectively, it does.

If Brian Wilson made an edit, then an edit was made by Brian Wilson. There are literal, physical thing he did to the music that are known. People are asking about these things, and I am answering.

Sometimes, these facts disagree with our own, personal "Smile". That is ok. But it does not change the facts, nor does it diminish their implications.

Someone asked me about objective truths surrounding Brian's plans for Love to Say Da Da, and I laid them out. You're not a fan of the facts and that's ok, but they cannot be publicly denied just because someone's interpretation is contradicted by the truths of the music. An interpretation, which, as I've made clear, is contradictory to what Marilyn Wilson, Carl Wilson, and Stephen Desper have all individually explained what the song is about, and which is founded upon misinformation itself (I am once again letting you know that Van Dyke Parks was not creatively involved with LTSDD).

If you want to make the argument that LTSDD works better on Smile as the water element, then by all means, make that argument and I won't stop ya! But if you want to make the argument that several people closely involved with the Smile album were all individually lying about Brian's plans for both LTSDD and the water element, and this is "proven" because some guy wrote an opinion piece about what the song means which you prefer, well, I hope you at least see how the logic isn't there.

What is it about 'the words to the song usually denote what it is about' that you don't understand?

Does it say on a box anywhere that Brian wrote CCW with the intention or the possibility of merging it with Da Da? 

Where those tapes which went missing from the studio ever recovered?

It is not my personal Smile - I don't have a fixed idea of what Smile is or could have become.  I find it rather laughable that you all seem to think that you can create Brian's personal Smile from bits of paper.

Earlier someone pointed out that people can lie - or are Marilyn and the people 'closely involved with Smile' immune or is that just when it suits our purposes?

I concede that VDP was not involved in LTSDD - so Brian wrote the words to the chant - does that make any difference - are we presuming he wasn't capable?

I am not making any argument about LTSDD - frankly this is your obsession I don't really care.

All this squabbling about who knows the most all seems rather pointless to me.  This is a message board not somewhere where we are carving the history in stone nor do we have access to an oracle just some administrative documentation, which whilst helpful, does not include the whole plan. 

I'm not sure I can be bothered with this any more.  I asked a particular question which no one has been able to answer and we have side tracked ourselves over smaller questions. The truth about all this is unlikely ever to to be known and however much you satisfy yourself that you have found the real Smile it will still only be your 'personal Smile' unless it's the one Brian put out in 2004.