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Author Topic: SMiLE was ready in 1967 - discuss  (Read 37247 times)
Jay
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« Reply #75 on: July 21, 2022, 06:26:22 AM »

GF, as I read this thread I was wondering if you were going to tie it all into the August Hawaii shows/media quotes, which strike me as the best evidence supporting your rendition of the overall events that led to the “produced by the Beach Boys” phase (even though that credit isn’t really accurate until 20/20). I’m glad you got there again, because despite some of the mini-discrepancies that can be pointed to, it’s really the only scenario that makes sense given what we now know about the production process at Brian’s house from summer 67 to early 69.

I think we can lay it out as a series of dot points:

--SMiLE as "grand project" was variably alienating to the rest of the band, divided between loving the material and worrying that their career as a band would go down a rabbit hole.
--December '66 strife ultimately caused a shift toward looking for a follow-up single (H&V) that could tide things over until they fully could sort out what to do.
--Brian, suffering from cognitive dissonance, floundered in his attempts to turn H&V into a version that managed to marry art and commerce.
--He sets aside those versions of H&V in March; Vegetables becomes the next (unsuccessful) attempt.
--Speculation here--Brian has a despairing conversation with Derek Taylor, where he suggests that SMILE is going to put away. Taylor overreacts, sends out his press release about SMiLE being "scrapped."
--With the band back on the road, Brian gets back into the studio with the Wrecking Crew ("Love to Say DaDa").
--Band returns from the road, ears on fire from criticism about their inability to match the more advanced material, which triggers a massive pow-wow about the future of the band, how to tailor tracks in order to make them more playable live, the need for the band to become more involved in the songwriting/production process, etc. Home studio idea comes into play here as (partially) a way for on-the-job production training for the band, primarily Carl and Dennis.
--Recasting existing SMiLE tracks for Smiley Smile begins, LP is recorded, assembled, mixed as fast as Brian can get through it; he's still got a plan to bring out the original concept of SMiLE, as captured in the Engemann memo, but this never comes to pass.
--LEAVING TWO MYSTERIES: 1) if Smiley was mixed by mid-July, why wait two months to release it? Was there further wrangling about the SMiLE tracks? Was the status of the royalty lawsuit and did it affect the timing? Were they thinking that H&V would be the catalyst for the record and when it didn't do that well, was there then wrangling about putting GV onto Smiley Smile? When exactly did that decision get made?
2) Why did the 10-track SMiLE LP disappear along with the Brother Records logo? Engemann memo suggests that it would appear as Brother 9002 and Wild Honey as 9003.
2a) Ten track SMiLE LP would have some added Smiley Smile overlap on it that Engemann etal may have missed, including very different versions of “Wind Chimes” and “Wonderful.” Could they have recognized some conceptual glitches about a 10-track SMiLE LP that had been initially overlooked?
--Hawaii trip reveals Brian contemplating a change/end to "Beach Boying" (at least for him), intimating some kind of transition to come.
--Brian works on songs for Wild Honey, but decides to give Darlin' to Redwood, which prompts another showdown. The band prevails; Brian sets aside more elaborate production plans ("Can't Wait Too Long" variants shelved when it can't successfully be turned into a "Wild Honey"-style song).
--Wild Honey single released in October, LP rushed out in December, "Darlin'" gives them a Top 20 hit.
--Mike goes off to India in early '68 and Brian comes out of hibernation with a lot of varied material, only a portion of which makes it onto the subsequent "Friends" LP. Dennis moves into songwriting/production.
--"Friends" single released, is a big chart disappointment; FRIENDS LP comes out late June, "Do It Again" rushed out as 45 from post-FRIENDS sessions.
--Brian makes one more attempt to build "Can't Wait Too Long" into a GV-type track, but can't pull it off; disillusionment and depression take over, and his reclusive phase begins. Even that is fraught, as the band is increasingly in his house recording tracks. He's apart from the band, but simultaneously surrounded by them.
--The band builds its first LP without him to the extent possible at the time, producing material that winds up as about half of 20/20. They didn’t quite have enough material ready to go, so they had to add “Our Prayer” and “Cabinessence” to the track list, which was another “twist of the knife” for Brian, meaning that he’d lost de facto control over how SMiLE would be handled.

What an incredible post! Seriously, its one of the better posts I've seen here in a while, and about an endlessly fascinating, albeit confounding as hell, subject.
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Galaxy Liz
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« Reply #76 on: July 21, 2022, 07:31:21 AM »


--Speculation here--Brian has a despairing conversation with Derek Taylor, where he suggests that SMILE is going to put away. Taylor overreacts, sends out his press release about SMiLE being "scrapped."

--LEAVING TWO MYSTERIES: 1) if Smiley was mixed by mid-July, why wait two months to release it?

2) Why did the 10-track SMiLE LP disappear along with the Brother Records logo?

I can’t honestly imagine Derek Taylor, a publicist, rushing off to send out a press release without some serious approval and authority when there is no up side to the message and which would likely cause some damage to the group.  That’s exactly the opposite of what a publicist does.

I’m not sure that 2 months is a great deal of time considering it has to be pressed, advertised, jackets prepared and printed, orders received and processed - though it is not the kind of business I’ve been involved in so I could be wrong.

My point in the first place was that Smile may have been finished and that it was deliberately pulled by Capitol, Brian or the band.
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« Reply #77 on: July 21, 2022, 08:00:56 AM »

When the Boys returned to the US that May, Brian was still recording Smile. The Derek Taylor announcement, I think, was either premature or simply wrong when it was published. So the Boys return, upset at the criticism and here's Brian still recording tracks which could not be reproduced on the stage. There are possibly arguments, finger pointing, anger, etc.

I'm extremely confused... you think that the Beach Boys accidentally announced that their new album was scrapped, and then happened to scrap the new album later? All because Love to Say Da Da has clarinets instead of melodicas and children's choirs? The latter being somehow easier to reproduce on stage?

Huh Huh Huh Huh Huh

I'd like to know who told Derek Taylor to make that announcement.  Capitol didn't - they still had recording sessions scheduled after that date.  Brian could have but in July was still discussing the cover for Smile so it seems unlikely.  Who would that serve?  Who would Derek Taylor believe and accept their authority to act upon it?  Was the announcement made to cause the scrapping of the album?  Seems to have worked that way.

Brian Wilson. Derek was a publicist working for the Beach Boys, and Brian was the guy who was making all the decisions, especially about Smile. Any theory that Taylor went rogue and accidentally predicted the future, or just straight up lied (and became right), comes directly from crazy town. Smile was announced as "scrapped" (which meant temporarily put aside in favor of something else) on May 6, but it had not been worked on for many months before that. The Beach Boys still had recording sessions after that date because they never stopped working on an album. These recording sessions continued all the way until July 20.
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Galaxy Liz
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« Reply #78 on: July 21, 2022, 09:10:19 AM »

When the Boys returned to the US that May, Brian was still recording Smile. The Derek Taylor announcement, I think, was either premature or simply wrong when it was published. So the Boys return, upset at the criticism and here's Brian still recording tracks which could not be reproduced on the stage. There are possibly arguments, finger pointing, anger, etc.

I'm extremely confused... you think that the Beach Boys accidentally announced that their new album was scrapped, and then happened to scrap the new album later? All because Love to Say Da Da has clarinets instead of melodicas and children's choirs? The latter being somehow easier to reproduce on stage?

Huh Huh Huh Huh Huh

I'd like to know who told Derek Taylor to make that announcement.  Capitol didn't - they still had recording sessions scheduled after that date.  Brian could have but in July was still discussing the cover for Smile so it seems unlikely.  Who would that serve?  Who would Derek Taylor believe and accept their authority to act upon it?  Was the announcement made to cause the scrapping of the album?  Seems to have worked that way.

Brian Wilson. Derek was a publicist working for the Beach Boys, and Brian was the guy who was making all the decisions, especially about Smile. Any theory that Taylor went rogue and accidentally predicted the future, or just straight up lied (and became right), comes directly from crazy town. Smile was announced as "scrapped" (which meant temporarily put aside in favor of something else) on May 6, but it had not been worked on for many months before that. The Beach Boys still had recording sessions after that date because they never stopped working on an album. These recording sessions continued all the way until July 20.

I know who he was but why would Brian have told him to do a press release saying the album was scrapped in early May when he had studio sessions booked for a week or 2 later?  The Beach Boys were in Germany during that time so the sessions were not booked for them.  Someone in this thread said that someone else ran the session.  I must try and check.  I can't imagine someone other than Brian directing the session.  Capitol cancelled the sessions the next day.   Brian and Capitol are still in discussions about the cover for Smile in July.  I don't think Derek Taylor went rogue.  I think someone told him to issue the release I just don't know who or why. 

You say "It hadn't been worked on for many months"  and "they never stopped working on an album" - which is it?  In May there wasn't another album and Da Da was for Smile and that was the scheduled session.  Plus they didn't start working on Smiley until Brian's home studio was operational on 11 June.
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« Reply #79 on: July 21, 2022, 09:26:30 AM »

I'm going to drop this quote here, from a post in 2016 in a discussion about the same issues we're discussing here, and I hope everyone reading it forms their own opinions on what Carl said. For the record, the article itself is 100% legitimate, and since this 2016 discussion I have gotten a clipping of the full article from the LA Times as it was published in that Sunday edition, October 8 1967. The quotes are accurate and in context.

Excerpts from "The Beach Boys' Quickest Album" , LA Times, October 8th 1967:

"Well, the album didn't really head for any direction. We just decided to, or I should say Brian decided to, make a real simple album. So, with that in mind, we recorded it at his house and it's the quickest album we've ever done." (Carl Wilson quote)

"You see, the whole thing is that 'Pet Sounds' was really an expanded type of musical thing. It's really quite a musical album and we got into a thing where we just wanted to ease up and make a simple album. It was a nice change. It's very hard on a person to keep on doing a 'Pet Sounds.'" (Carl Wilson quote)

Last year, when "Good Vibrations" was racking up its million-plus sales, Capitol had the follow-up album scheduled under the title of "Smile." The album jacket already had been printed, a picture of a shop which dispensed smiles. But the album never came out and the Beach Boys became embroiled in a royalty suit against Capitol. Rumors said that Brian, a perfectionist, had destroyed all the tapes for the LP. "We didn't scrap them," Carl said. "We just haven't used them yet. We did it all from scratch when we started again. We actually had finished the album but then a lot of things didn't turn out the way Brian liked. We all didn't agree on different types of things. We decided to do something new."

"If he gets an idea it's now and it's better than something from the past. I've seen it a hundred times. We've seen a lot of potentially great songs just be shelved. They come out maybe two or three years later, but they're in his mind somehow. If that particular idea seems to fit what he's working on at the time it will just come naturally." (Mike Love quote)
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HeyJude
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« Reply #80 on: July 21, 2022, 09:32:10 AM »

One way I would describe how “close” the “Smile” album ever was to being “finished” would be to point to the circa 1995 Paley sessions. The comparison is only apt in this specific way: Andy Paley has gone on record saying the Beach Boys could have cut vocals for *an entire album* of that material in two days.

Similarly, it’s easy to look at the “Smile” assembly presented at the front of the “Smile Sessions” box and say “well, all we need is the following overdubs…..” Even if we ignore that the circa 2003 work on compiling a “finished” album accomplished a lot of the compositional work to getting the track flow to seem “complete”, and we just assume for the sake of argument that the assembly as presented on the 2011 set could have existed in 1967 and just needed X number of overdubs, a very similar problem presents itself as what happened decades later on the Paley material.

Namely, get all of the creators and band members in there to do the work. There are approximately 87 roadblocks to making that happen. Yes, the Paley project had more business/internal politics issues than “Smile” did (arguably, certainly *different* types of those issues). But there’s a TON of BB material, and just projects in general, that are seemingly *so* close to happening, yet are a million miles away.

And that’s not even getting into truly actual *finished* projects that have been shelved.


They had 7 complete tracks which just needed some sweetening and mixing (which Brian did over one night with a couple of technicians for Smiley Smile - though he may want to take more time for Smile especially considering its complexity).  
They planned to record the vocals for Surf’s Up in December 1966 but for some reason this didn’t happen and it seems likely that this was the time when the poop hit the fan.  We know that the vocals were done at some point.  I’ve been trying to find that picture of the master tapes to see if there is one for the Surf’s Up vocals because if it was recorded in 66-67 that means it was worked on outside of the listed schedules and therefore probably in Brian’s home studio post the probably fictional ‘scrapping’ in May.  If that is the case who can say exactly how much was left to be finished.


What I was saying with the Paley analogy is that it's not about the total amount of work so much as the machinations to get everybody to do that work. For Brian to decide what he wanted, for the band to get in there and do it, and for Brian to make a final decision and mix and master. Granted, I don't think it's as simple as a few "Smile" tracks needing "sweetening", but as I've mentioned, even if we stipulate to that idea, it's not as if it was anywhere close to simple to get that work done.

There was a lot of "for some reason, this didn't happen" going on around that time, as has been the case throughout the band's history. The deal is that there *were* reasons. Many, and most of them were not about the actual amount of time it could have theoretically taken for firmly decided-upon overdubs to be added.
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sloopjohnb72
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« Reply #81 on: July 21, 2022, 09:32:32 AM »

When the Boys returned to the US that May, Brian was still recording Smile. The Derek Taylor announcement, I think, was either premature or simply wrong when it was published. So the Boys return, upset at the criticism and here's Brian still recording tracks which could not be reproduced on the stage. There are possibly arguments, finger pointing, anger, etc.

I'm extremely confused... you think that the Beach Boys accidentally announced that their new album was scrapped, and then happened to scrap the new album later? All because Love to Say Da Da has clarinets instead of melodicas and children's choirs? The latter being somehow easier to reproduce on stage?

Huh Huh Huh Huh Huh

I'd like to know who told Derek Taylor to make that announcement.  Capitol didn't - they still had recording sessions scheduled after that date.  Brian could have but in July was still discussing the cover for Smile so it seems unlikely.  Who would that serve?  Who would Derek Taylor believe and accept their authority to act upon it?  Was the announcement made to cause the scrapping of the album?  Seems to have worked that way.

Brian Wilson. Derek was a publicist working for the Beach Boys, and Brian was the guy who was making all the decisions, especially about Smile. Any theory that Taylor went rogue and accidentally predicted the future, or just straight up lied (and became right), comes directly from crazy town. Smile was announced as "scrapped" (which meant temporarily put aside in favor of something else) on May 6, but it had not been worked on for many months before that. The Beach Boys still had recording sessions after that date because they never stopped working on an album. These recording sessions continued all the way until July 20.

I know who he was but why would Brian have told him to do a press release saying the album was scrapped in early May when he had studio sessions booked for a week or 2 later?  The Beach Boys were in Germany during that time so the sessions were not booked for them.  Someone in this thread said that someone else ran the session.  I must try and check.  I can't imagine someone other than Brian directing the session.  Capitol cancelled the sessions the next day.   Brian and Capitol are still in discussions about the cover for Smile in July.  I don't think Derek Taylor went rogue.  I think someone told him to issue the release I just don't know who or why. 

You say "It hadn't been worked on for many months"  and "they never stopped working on an album" - which is it?  In May there wasn't another album and Da Da was for Smile and that was the scheduled session.  Plus they didn't start working on Smiley until Brian's home studio was operational on 11 June.

The sessions for Love to Say Da Da are run by Brian, as can be heard on the 2011 box, as they are Beach Boys sessions, and Brian Wilson was their producer. Brian consulted with Derek Taylor about the press release because the Beach Boys would not be releasing an album called Smile as their next LP. There were sessions booked because the Beach Boys were recording artists under a contract that needed to deliver an album. Nothing about that is different from before the press release. It is specified in the press release itself that Smile is not being completely thrown away, and Smile discussions between the Beach Boys and record companies continued for many years. It seems like there's a big misunderstanding here, based on the way people want to classify Brian's recording sessions. There is nothing on the paperwork that suggests that something is a "Smile session" or "not a Smile session." They are all sessions for The Beach Boys and their new music, whether the album was called Smile or not. After May 6, it was not.
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« Reply #82 on: July 21, 2022, 09:37:51 AM »

So I'll ask in reference to Carl's October 1967 interview, was Carl also a resident of "crazy town" with the way he directly contradicted Taylor's statement?

Carl specifically said it wasn't scrapped, and specifically said they started again from scratch (on Smiley Smile). If Carl is to be believed, that all but destroys the narrative that Smile and Smiley Smile were part of the same project timeline, that Smiley Smile *is* Smile, and that sessions merely blended into each other. Carl suggested a definite breaking point in the timeline switching from work on Smile to work on what became "Smiley Smile", with the phrase "starting from scratch" being pretty definite.

That breaking point, as pointed out earlier, was the two weeks at the end of May, into the first week of June '67 when the Boys returned from the European tour, held sessions at Western and Sound Recorders for "Vegetables", "With Me Tonight", and "Cool Cool Water", then in the span of one week drastically changed the entire working method and moved to Brian's house to start recording what ended up on Smiley Smile.
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« Reply #83 on: July 21, 2022, 09:47:41 AM »

As ever, it is useful to keep in mind that the Beach Boys is not just a band, or group, that makes music.  Before that, they are a family. It so happens that this family makes music and then found commercial success with that music, but they are a family first and foremost.

For the Beach Boys, Smiley Smile is preferable to whatever Smile could or would have been because Smiley is, in their collective mindset, a collective endeavor by the whole band ("Produced by the Beach Boys") with all members engaged in the creation of the album.  The album is recorded in sequestered  family space, Brian Wilson's home, away from the outsiders and various external "bad influences" that are perceived to the cause of Brian's problems.  In this way, Smiley Smile is indeed Smile - but only the Beach Boys' version of Smile, not that of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks.

During the time period in question, they primary operating goal of the collective Beach Boys is not musical, let alone artistic.  As of mid-1967, the main purpose of the Beach Boys is to stay together as a family/band. Their career is, arguably, in jeopardy during the Smile-era, and once Smile collapses, it becomes more apparent that something must be done, and done quickly, to right the ship, or to revert the Beach Boys back to its prior equilibrium state - that of a unified family organization, rather than an artistic dictatorship whereby all members of the family are at the mercy of the whims of one eccentric family member.

Stability is goal number one, because if they cannot do that, then everything else - chart ranking, singles, musical quality, etc. - is moot.  Because of Brian's actions circa 1966-67, the family foundation of the Beach Boys had been in jeopardy.  If that hadn't been the case - for example, if, hypothetically, Brian had hired Tony Asher to help him write happy, up-tempo songs about boy-girl relationships - there wouldn't have been as much of a problem.  If the family foundation is strong and secure (i.e., nobody in the band is going to leave, or go solo, or do anything that threatens the existence of the band) then yes, it is possible to move on and try to make good music. This was the state of things in, say, 1963, and into the first half of 1964. In those days the Beach Boys, as a whole, single entity, is in good shape (especially if they can put some distance between themselves and Murry, which they did)  Brian Wilson, however, as an individual, is progressively in worse and worse shape, as signified by the nervous breakdown at the end of 1964.

Anybody can fill in the rest... it's basically a tug-of-war between Brian and what he represents (both positive and negative) and the Beach Boys business family and what it represents (both positive and negative). Anyway, this dynamic is a significant (though not the only) reason Smiley Smile sounds the way it does in comparison to the Smile Sessions music. Smiley was a function of business necessity (survival) , not just unfettered artistic license on the part of the band members, as if they could easily choose what they wanted Smiley to sound like.

Smiley is a a reflection of the Beach Boys as of mid-1967: talented, but hopelessly dysfunctional.  I appreciate Smiley too, but to really celebrate the album, you need to push the dysfunction and family problems out of your mind and pretend that the Beach Boys are happily unified and are intending to make a cool, weird, left-field album.


No, The Beach Boys are a band that makes music.  Brian has other cousins who are not in the band.  Al and Bruce are no relation at all.  If the group disbanded those who are family would still be family.

If your primary aim is to keep the group (family and non-family) together then it still is way off target since it started the decline in Brian’s creative involvement in the group and his decline in health and into drug taking and remaining in his room which eventually ended with them expelling him from the group.  

But that isn’t the primary aim of a group.  It is to make music and the best music that they can.  As they very soon started trading off Smile - not The Beach Boys version but the version by Brian and VDP - by promising its release and then putting pieces of it on various albums it’s obvious that they realised its worth eventually.  Brian puts a version of it out to great acclaim and then in 2011 The Smile Sessions are released which presumably was approved by the remaining band.

Smiley Smile was labelled ‘produced by the Beach Boys’ yet they over ruled Brian’s wishes not to include GV.  It is made in Brian Wilson’s home not the Beach Boys family home!

Mike Love was not happy with Tony Asher’s lyrical contribution either.  There was a problem during Pet Sounds.

What it basically amounted to was that Brian had musical acumen which the other band members lacked but they didn’t trust him.  Them forcing Brian to abandon 3 Dog Night who he had signed to Brother and then blaming Brian for not keeping them when they went on to be extremely successful is another case in point of them not trusting Brian’s skill and then blaming him for them not doing so. So basically instead of keeping the band together, they shot themselves in the foot.

According to David Anderle Brian did intend to make a good humour album and THAT is Smiley Smile.

This is a vast, vast oversimplification of the rest of the band's attitude towards Brian (and their attitude towards the "Smile" music), especially if we're lumping *all* of the other members together.

There's no successful reductionist approach to trying to explain the demise of "Smile", and certainly no reductionist approach to trying to explain the demise of Brian, both within the group and outside of the group.

And if we're getting into "expelling Brian from the group", which I have to assume means the late 1982 "firing", then that's a *whole* other ball of a wax full of tons of moving parts.


Of course it’s a simplification though I think it was Van Dyke Parks who said something like ‘all of them disliked it, even the lesser known members of the group’.  VDP may feel a little bitterly toward everyone considering what happened and it may be tainting his recollection but you’d think that it would have to be more than 3 who disliked it enough to want it scrapped especially considering the difficulties that decision would cause them.

I’m not actually trying to explain the ‘demise’ of Smile - the reverse. I’m trying to explain how it may have survived and how it was actually ready and that it was only the decision of the band - or the majority of the band - which prevented its release.

As for ‘explaining the demise’ of Brian.  He is not yet dead, not actually nor musically.  He has written and performed music and produced many albums both within and outside the group.

Of course I’m referring to the firing and we all know it was done to try and give Brian the motivation to quit drugs though I’m not sure that saying he couldn’t ever rejoin the group even if he stopped taking drugs would be a motivation to stop, probably a reason to take more.

I think it's pretty well-established that VDP is an important source of information, and that he also has his own spin on things as far as recollections and impressions, and so on. I don't know how much he understood *all* of the elements of the dynamics within the band. Like, how often did he have a long conversation with Al Jardine about how Al felt about the quality of the music, separate from the commercial/business outlook?

I think when anybody, whether it's VDP or fans/scholars, try to say that "all" of the rest of the band felt one way about the "Smile" material at any given point, that's not telling the full story. Yes, I think generalizing and maybe a bit of hyperbole from someone, including VDP, to drive home the point that the band's lack of hearty support for the material played a role in the album's demise, is fine. But when we're delving deep into the story, the reality is that the various members had simultaneous conflicting feelings about the stuff, and how they acted in response also shifted over time. Dennis and Carl could be very supportive of Brian, and also had times where they stood by and let Brian be torn down a bit (e.g. the Redwood tracks). I think Mike is the only member of the group that, at certain points, had actual skepticism about the *music* itself, in terms of just saying "that is really good, interesting material", again totally separate from misgivings about the commercial nature of the material. And even Mike has been able over the years to acknowledge the quality of the some of the material, including Brian's vocal on "Wonderful."

I'm not here to vociferously defend the other band members. But it's a very hazy, complex situation in terms of how they felt and how they acted. It's easy decades later to just look at the material and say "how could anybody stand in the way?." There are many, many reasons. The power dynamic on multiple levels was shifting. The amount of clout people had shifted. It starts to get murky trying to parse the difference between "not championing" something versus actively standing in the way.

And obviously,  by "demise of Brian", I was referring to his several downward tracks, in the mid-70s and then again in the early 80s. And that 1982 "firing", while obviously tied as *everything* in the band's history is to their previous history, was a pretty different animal from what was going on during the "bedroom" years of the mid-70s-ish. Brian was in some ways in a much darker and dangerous place in 1982, and the status of the touring operation was more of a factor in decisions they made about Brian, both positive and negative. By 1982, they weren't really a studio band anymore. They were a touring act that occasionally did studio work.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2022, 09:59:23 AM by HeyJude » Logged

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« Reply #84 on: July 21, 2022, 09:56:15 AM »

I don’t think it’s crazy to suggest that performing “Smiley Smile” material/arrangements would be easier for the band than “Smile” material/arrangements. It’s important to keep in mind that any live concert scenario would involve performing only a few songs from whatever version had been released.

“Smiley Smile” material (and “Wild Honey” material for that matter) could require less *stripping down* of the arrangements to play well enough on stage. They were going to be doing a few tracks, so in the extreme example, “Getting’ Hungry” would be far, far less demanding on the 1967 tour lineup than performing “Surf’s Up” or the full “Smile” version of “Wind Chimes” or something. Either version of “Vegetables” would have been among the easier tracks to arrange for their live show.

Now, how much this played a role in what happened with “Smile”, I don’t know. I don’t weigh this aspect particularly heavily.

I think all of this becomes much more germane of course when we get to “Wild Honey”, and you can see with those late ’67 shows that they seemed more into trying to do stripped-back versions of “Wild Honey” songs; they required less stripping back than like “Child is Father of the Man” or “Look” or “Surf’s Up”, etc.
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« Reply #85 on: July 21, 2022, 10:00:08 AM »

When the Boys returned to the US that May, Brian was still recording Smile. The Derek Taylor announcement, I think, was either premature or simply wrong when it was published. So the Boys return, upset at the criticism and here's Brian still recording tracks which could not be reproduced on the stage. There are possibly arguments, finger pointing, anger, etc.

I'm extremely confused... you think that the Beach Boys accidentally announced that their new album was scrapped, and then happened to scrap the new album later? All because Love to Say Da Da has clarinets instead of melodicas and children's choirs? The latter being somehow easier to reproduce on stage?

Huh Huh Huh Huh Huh

I'd like to know who told Derek Taylor to make that announcement.  Capitol didn't - they still had recording sessions scheduled after that date.  Brian could have but in July was still discussing the cover for Smile so it seems unlikely.  Who would that serve?  Who would Derek Taylor believe and accept their authority to act upon it?  Was the announcement made to cause the scrapping of the album?  Seems to have worked that way.

Brian Wilson. Derek was a publicist working for the Beach Boys, and Brian was the guy who was making all the decisions, especially about Smile. Any theory that Taylor went rogue and accidentally predicted the future, or just straight up lied (and became right), comes directly from crazy town. Smile was announced as "scrapped" (which meant temporarily put aside in favor of something else) on May 6, but it had not been worked on for many months before that. The Beach Boys still had recording sessions after that date because they never stopped working on an album. These recording sessions continued all the way until July 20.

Asking about the point in bold: Where did you get that information that it had not been worked on for many months? Work was done on various Smile tracks every month in 1967 from January up to June. It stopped in mid-April because the Beach Boys would leave for a 5-6 week tour of the US and then Europe and were not available to record in LA. Brian held the DaDa sessions in May while the band was still in Europe, after Taylor's comments had been published.
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« Reply #86 on: July 21, 2022, 10:21:15 AM »

It's clear that most of the original SMiLE tracks were not worked on for months--held in limbo by the centripetal actions that ensued when there was some form of blowback against the project as a whole. What comes next is two months of grappling with H&V in an attempt to get the right follow-up to GV.

The central point of a thesis that "SMiLE was ready in 1967" hinges on the idea that all of the vocals were recorded for the backing tracks. We know that this is not true, and that efforts went off in related but tangential directions in the first three months of '67.

Clearly H&V in some form would also have appeared on the SMiLE LP, but the waters are very muddy about what that would have been, and it became moot when the band started over for SMILEY SMILE and (mostly) re-recorded H&V (along with "Woody","Wind Chimes," "Wonderful" and "Whistle In").

The fact that they'd not been worked on for awhile was part of the lingering crisis about what to do, one that didn't get resolved until (as GF suggests) the band returned from its April-May tour with their own agenda items for SMiLE and the band's future. The album was in limbo, but the Engemann memo suggests that Brian was trying to keep SMiLE in play as a separate entity, at least for awhile. Did he give up and abandon all that when he was confronted by Mike etal over Redwood?

SMiLE was almost ready in '67, for sure. But the impediments that cropped up in terms of taking it over the finish line just got larger and more onerous. The more Brian worked on workarounds, the farther the finish line seemed to be. Carl's description omits the pain involved in it, but otherwise has the ring of truth.
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« Reply #87 on: July 21, 2022, 10:31:48 AM »


--Speculation here--Brian has a despairing conversation with Derek Taylor, where he suggests that SMILE is going to put away. Taylor overreacts, sends out his press release about SMiLE being "scrapped."

--LEAVING TWO MYSTERIES: 1) if Smiley was mixed by mid-July, why wait two months to release it?

2) Why did the 10-track SMiLE LP disappear along with the Brother Records logo?

I can’t honestly imagine Derek Taylor, a publicist, rushing off to send out a press release without some serious approval and authority when there is no up side to the message and which would likely cause some damage to the group.  That’s exactly the opposite of what a publicist does.

I’m not sure that 2 months is a great deal of time considering it has to be pressed, advertised, jackets prepared and printed, orders received and processed - though it is not the kind of business I’ve been involved in so I could be wrong.

My point in the first place was that Smile may have been finished and that it was deliberately pulled by Capitol, Brian or the band.


From the data at Bellagio, we see that PET SOUNDS was released a bit less than a month after it was mastered.

And there is about a month between the last recording session for WILD HONEY (mid-November 1967) and its release date (December 18).

By the time SMILEY SMILE came out it was sixteen months since PET SOUNDS, and there was a lot of consternation about the non-appearance of the follow-up LP. With the mastering finished in late July and H&V released at just about the same moment, it's odd that it took another month UNLESS something else came up to delay it.

An analogous example is the FRIENDS LP, which also languished for a couple months after the mastering was complete. With the single doing poorly, and with a sizable amount of turmoil over touring dates, there may have been some second-guessing about the LP, which clearly had no other potential hits on it...which explains the flurry of additional recording activity at the time, including "Do It Again," which came out as a 45 just two weeks after the FRIENDD LP was finally release.

Delays of this type likely involve some other issues behind the scenes, most likely within the band. And the band had to be concerned about their career viability in May-June 1968...
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« Reply #88 on: July 21, 2022, 10:36:25 AM »

It's pretty clear to see what was worked on and to assume why those tracks were worked on, not just from the session dates but also by various articles and interviews where it can be pieced together. They needed a single to follow up GV, obviously, so there are Heroes and Vegetables getting the majority of the sessions after January. Those were the two titles specifically mentioned as single material, but they would also be included on the album and were on the tracklist (and back cover slick). So they had to be worked on with perhaps more of a priority than some of the others if they were tagged as potential singles. But that's not enough to suggest because they were single material and getting more of the attention after January and into May that they were not "Smile" album tracks too, or that work was not being done on the album "for months". It was all part of the same thing. The only examples that were not part of the bigger picture after January were the Jasper Daily sessions and Carl's "Tones" sessions.

What's also crucial to consider in terms of asking why wasn't more work done on those existing album tracks during this time opens up the issues of Carl being arrested for evading the draft, the lawsuit against Capitol being filed in March '67, and of course the fact that the band who still had to add vocals to the tracks recorded in '66 would be unavailable due to that 5-6 week tour in April and May. You can assume all that work was done on Vegetables in April to get what was needed before they left, and so another potential single would be "in the can" for a possible single, along with Heroes.

I don't think any of that suggests work on the album overall was halted in any way if there were Smile-related sessions held every month from January to May '67 and some issues that were purely external such as the lawsuit, the draft arrest, and others like the tour simply made work impossible since key members would be unavailable.
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« Reply #89 on: July 21, 2022, 10:42:41 AM »

When the Boys returned to the US that May, Brian was still recording Smile. The Derek Taylor announcement, I think, was either premature or simply wrong when it was published. So the Boys return, upset at the criticism and here's Brian still recording tracks which could not be reproduced on the stage. There are possibly arguments, finger pointing, anger, etc.

I'm extremely confused... you think that the Beach Boys accidentally announced that their new album was scrapped, and then happened to scrap the new album later? All because Love to Say Da Da has clarinets instead of melodicas and children's choirs? The latter being somehow easier to reproduce on stage?

Huh Huh Huh Huh Huh

I'd like to know who told Derek Taylor to make that announcement.  Capitol didn't - they still had recording sessions scheduled after that date.  Brian could have but in July was still discussing the cover for Smile so it seems unlikely.  Who would that serve?  Who would Derek Taylor believe and accept their authority to act upon it?  Was the announcement made to cause the scrapping of the album?  Seems to have worked that way.

Brian Wilson. Derek was a publicist working for the Beach Boys, and Brian was the guy who was making all the decisions, especially about Smile. Any theory that Taylor went rogue and accidentally predicted the future, or just straight up lied (and became right), comes directly from crazy town. Smile was announced as "scrapped" (which meant temporarily put aside in favor of something else) on May 6, but it had not been worked on for many months before that. The Beach Boys still had recording sessions after that date because they never stopped working on an album. These recording sessions continued all the way until July 20.

I know who he was but why would Brian have told him to do a press release saying the album was scrapped in early May when he had studio sessions booked for a week or 2 later?  The Beach Boys were in Germany during that time so the sessions were not booked for them.  Someone in this thread said that someone else ran the session.  I must try and check.  I can't imagine someone other than Brian directing the session.  Capitol cancelled the sessions the next day.   Brian and Capitol are still in discussions about the cover for Smile in July.  I don't think Derek Taylor went rogue.  I think someone told him to issue the release I just don't know who or why. 

You say "It hadn't been worked on for many months"  and "they never stopped working on an album" - which is it?  In May there wasn't another album and Da Da was for Smile and that was the scheduled session.  Plus they didn't start working on Smiley until Brian's home studio was operational on 11 June.

The sessions for Love to Say Da Da are run by Brian, as can be heard on the 2011 box, as they are Beach Boys sessions, and Brian Wilson was their producer. Brian consulted with Derek Taylor about the press release because the Beach Boys would not be releasing an album called Smile as their next LP. There were sessions booked because the Beach Boys were recording artists under a contract that needed to deliver an album. Nothing about that is different from before the press release. It is specified in the press release itself that Smile is not being completely thrown away, and Smile discussions between the Beach Boys and record companies continued for many years. It seems like there's a big misunderstanding here, based on the way people want to classify Brian's recording sessions. There is nothing on the paperwork that suggests that something is a "Smile session" or "not a Smile session." They are all sessions for The Beach Boys and their new music, whether the album was called Smile or not. After May 6, it was not.

Someone else here said it wasn't Brian, not me.  As I said I don't believe that anyone else would run the session but I'm trying to be fair and consider it as a possibility.  So the album was scrapped 2 weeks before a studio session to record a track which is well known to be a track for Smile (it doesn't need to be written down on the studio paperwork for us to know that Da Da was intended for Smile and was not on Smiley Smile).  According to Badham (not always reliable) Capitol cancelled the final day scheduled for DaDa.  So it seems they didn't know about Smiley Smile on 19th May or else it would have gone ahead. In any case Brian insisted all the original Smile recordings should not be used for Smiley and re-recorded them at home.  So it seems that Brian didn't know the album was scrapped either.
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« Reply #90 on: July 21, 2022, 10:51:29 AM »


--Speculation here--Brian has a despairing conversation with Derek Taylor, where he suggests that SMILE is going to put away. Taylor overreacts, sends out his press release about SMiLE being "scrapped."

--LEAVING TWO MYSTERIES: 1) if Smiley was mixed by mid-July, why wait two months to release it?

2) Why did the 10-track SMiLE LP disappear along with the Brother Records logo?

I can’t honestly imagine Derek Taylor, a publicist, rushing off to send out a press release without some serious approval and authority when there is no up side to the message and which would likely cause some damage to the group.  That’s exactly the opposite of what a publicist does.

I’m not sure that 2 months is a great deal of time considering it has to be pressed, advertised, jackets prepared and printed, orders received and processed - though it is not the kind of business I’ve been involved in so I could be wrong.

My point in the first place was that Smile may have been finished and that it was deliberately pulled by Capitol, Brian or the band.


From the data at Bellagio, we see that PET SOUNDS was released a bit less than a month after it was mastered.

And there is about a month between the last recording session for WILD HONEY (mid-November 1967) and its release date (December 18).

By the time SMILEY SMILE came out it was sixteen months since PET SOUNDS, and there was a lot of consternation about the non-appearance of the follow-up LP. With the mastering finished in late July and H&V released at just about the same moment, it's odd that it took another month UNLESS something else came up to delay it.

An analogous example is the FRIENDS LP, which also languished for a couple months after the mastering was complete. With the single doing poorly, and with a sizable amount of turmoil over touring dates, there may have been some second-guessing about the LP, which clearly had no other potential hits on it...which explains the flurry of additional recording activity at the time, including "Do It Again," which came out as a 45 just two weeks after the FRIENDD LP was finally release.

Delays of this type likely involve some other issues behind the scenes, most likely within the band. And the band had to be concerned about their career viability in May-June 1968...

Don, I think this may explain the delay in some part:



That was published in Billboard, July 22 1967. This was when the "deal" between Capitol and the band, establishing Brother Records and the distribution agreement was finalized. With the deal involving terms of the previous lawsuit settlement, I can imagine there were mountains of legal documents to sign and approve before anything could be put in motion. As noted in the article, KHJ (and other radio stations) had already been playing exclusive tape dubs of the Heroes single, but it had not seen an official release on 45rpm until 2 days after this article, so the machine moved pretty quickly. Note the dates on the Capitol/Engemann Smile memos too, concerning the booklets and album art - July 25th. It took the sealing of the deal to get all of these parts moving.

I can imagine there were more legal issues at work as well which delayed the album release, and also worth noting is that the "Gettin Hungry" single was released at almost the same time (within weeks at least) as the Smiley album that September.

Also worth noting is how Capitol released "Best Of volume 2" at the end of July, so maybe they staggered the releases so the shelves wouldn't be filled with two Beach Boys albums, one showing their old sound and the latest showcasing a radically different sound. Give the Greatest Hits vol 2 a chance to sell, run its course throughout the remaining summer months, then drop the new album? Just a thought.
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« Reply #91 on: July 21, 2022, 10:55:22 AM »

As ever, it is useful to keep in mind that the Beach Boys is not just a band, or group, that makes music.  Before that, they are a family. It so happens that this family makes music and then found commercial success with that music, but they are a family first and foremost.

For the Beach Boys, Smiley Smile is preferable to whatever Smile could or would have been because Smiley is, in their collective mindset, a collective endeavor by the whole band ("Produced by the Beach Boys") with all members engaged in the creation of the album.  The album is recorded in sequestered  family space, Brian Wilson's home, away from the outsiders and various external "bad influences" that are perceived to the cause of Brian's problems.  In this way, Smiley Smile is indeed Smile - but only the Beach Boys' version of Smile, not that of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks.

During the time period in question, they primary operating goal of the collective Beach Boys is not musical, let alone artistic.  As of mid-1967, the main purpose of the Beach Boys is to stay together as a family/band. Their career is, arguably, in jeopardy during the Smile-era, and once Smile collapses, it becomes more apparent that something must be done, and done quickly, to right the ship, or to revert the Beach Boys back to its prior equilibrium state - that of a unified family organization, rather than an artistic dictatorship whereby all members of the family are at the mercy of the whims of one eccentric family member.

Stability is goal number one, because if they cannot do that, then everything else - chart ranking, singles, musical quality, etc. - is moot.  Because of Brian's actions circa 1966-67, the family foundation of the Beach Boys had been in jeopardy.  If that hadn't been the case - for example, if, hypothetically, Brian had hired Tony Asher to help him write happy, up-tempo songs about boy-girl relationships - there wouldn't have been as much of a problem.  If the family foundation is strong and secure (i.e., nobody in the band is going to leave, or go solo, or do anything that threatens the existence of the band) then yes, it is possible to move on and try to make good music. This was the state of things in, say, 1963, and into the first half of 1964. In those days the Beach Boys, as a whole, single entity, is in good shape (especially if they can put some distance between themselves and Murry, which they did)  Brian Wilson, however, as an individual, is progressively in worse and worse shape, as signified by the nervous breakdown at the end of 1964.

Anybody can fill in the rest... it's basically a tug-of-war between Brian and what he represents (both positive and negative) and the Beach Boys business family and what it represents (both positive and negative). Anyway, this dynamic is a significant (though not the only) reason Smiley Smile sounds the way it does in comparison to the Smile Sessions music. Smiley was a function of business necessity (survival) , not just unfettered artistic license on the part of the band members, as if they could easily choose what they wanted Smiley to sound like.

Smiley is a a reflection of the Beach Boys as of mid-1967: talented, but hopelessly dysfunctional.  I appreciate Smiley too, but to really celebrate the album, you need to push the dysfunction and family problems out of your mind and pretend that the Beach Boys are happily unified and are intending to make a cool, weird, left-field album.


No, The Beach Boys are a band that makes music.  Brian has other cousins who are not in the band.  Al and Bruce are no relation at all.  If the group disbanded those who are family would still be family.

If your primary aim is to keep the group (family and non-family) together then it still is way off target since it started the decline in Brian’s creative involvement in the group and his decline in health and into drug taking and remaining in his room which eventually ended with them expelling him from the group.  

But that isn’t the primary aim of a group.  It is to make music and the best music that they can.  As they very soon started trading off Smile - not The Beach Boys version but the version by Brian and VDP - by promising its release and then putting pieces of it on various albums it’s obvious that they realised its worth eventually.  Brian puts a version of it out to great acclaim and then in 2011 The Smile Sessions are released which presumably was approved by the remaining band.

Smiley Smile was labelled ‘produced by the Beach Boys’ yet they over ruled Brian’s wishes not to include GV.  It is made in Brian Wilson’s home not the Beach Boys family home!

Mike Love was not happy with Tony Asher’s lyrical contribution either.  There was a problem during Pet Sounds.

What it basically amounted to was that Brian had musical acumen which the other band members lacked but they didn’t trust him.  Them forcing Brian to abandon 3 Dog Night who he had signed to Brother and then blaming Brian for not keeping them when they went on to be extremely successful is another case in point of them not trusting Brian’s skill and then blaming him for them not doing so. So basically instead of keeping the band together, they shot themselves in the foot.

According to David Anderle Brian did intend to make a good humour album and THAT is Smiley Smile.

This is a vast, vast oversimplification of the rest of the band's attitude towards Brian (and their attitude towards the "Smile" music), especially if we're lumping *all* of the other members together.

There's no successful reductionist approach to trying to explain the demise of "Smile", and certainly no reductionist approach to trying to explain the demise of Brian, both within the group and outside of the group.

And if we're getting into "expelling Brian from the group", which I have to assume means the late 1982 "firing", then that's a *whole* other ball of a wax full of tons of moving parts.


Of course it’s a simplification though I think it was Van Dyke Parks who said something like ‘all of them disliked it, even the lesser known members of the group’.  VDP may feel a little bitterly toward everyone considering what happened and it may be tainting his recollection but you’d think that it would have to be more than 3 who disliked it enough to want it scrapped especially considering the difficulties that decision would cause them.

I’m not actually trying to explain the ‘demise’ of Smile - the reverse. I’m trying to explain how it may have survived and how it was actually ready and that it was only the decision of the band - or the majority of the band - which prevented its release.

As for ‘explaining the demise’ of Brian.  He is not yet dead, not actually nor musically.  He has written and performed music and produced many albums both within and outside the group.

Of course I’m referring to the firing and we all know it was done to try and give Brian the motivation to quit drugs though I’m not sure that saying he couldn’t ever rejoin the group even if he stopped taking drugs would be a motivation to stop, probably a reason to take more.

I think it's pretty well-established that VDP is an important source of information, and that he also has his own spin on things as far as recollections and impressions, and so on. I don't know how much he understood *all* of the elements of the dynamics within the band. Like, how often did he have a long conversation with Al Jardine about how Al felt about the quality of the music, separate from the commercial/business outlook?

I think when anybody, whether it's VDP or fans/scholars, try to say that "all" of the rest of the band felt one way about the "Smile" material at any given point, that's not telling the full story. Yes, I think generalizing and maybe a bit of hyperbole from someone, including VDP, to drive home the point that the band's lack of hearty support for the material played a role in the album's demise, is fine. But when we're delving deep into the story, the reality is that the various members had simultaneous conflicting feelings about the stuff, and how they acted in response also shifted over time. Dennis and Carl could be very supportive of Brian, and also had times where they stood by and let Brian be torn down a bit (e.g. the Redwood tracks). I think Mike is the only member of the group that, at certain points, had actual skepticism about the *music* itself, in terms of just saying "that is really good, interesting material", again totally separate from misgivings about the commercial nature of the material. And even Mike has been able over the years to acknowledge the quality of the some of the material, including Brian's vocal on "Wonderful."

I'm not here to vociferously defend the other band members. But it's a very hazy, complex situation in terms of how they felt and how they acted. It's easy decades later to just look at the material and say "how could anybody stand in the way?." There are many, many reasons. The power dynamic on multiple levels was shifting. The amount of clout people had shifted. It starts to get murky trying to parse the difference between "not championing" something versus actively standing in the way.

And obviously,  by "demise of Brian", I was referring to his several downward tracks, in the mid-70s and then again in the early 80s. And that 1982 "firing", while obviously tied as *everything* in the band's history is to their previous history, was a pretty different animal from what was going on during the "bedroom" years of the mid-70s-ish. Brian was in some ways in a much darker and dangerous place in 1982, and the status of the touring operation was more of a factor in decisions they made about Brian, both positive and negative. By 1982, they weren't really a studio band anymore. They were a touring act that occasionally did studio work.

They were all at the Surfs Up recording session with VDP and David Anderle.  Anderle said there was ‘no ringleader’ that they all expressed concerns so VDP’s remark is substantiated and likely related to the discussion that took place then in December 1966.

I was not telling the full story simply because it is off the topic we are discussing and was only answering the points made by someone else. I am not trying to apportion blame and as I’ve just said Anderle said there was no ringleader and that they all had concerns.

I know what you meant by ‘demise’ I was just pointing out that ‘rumours of [his] death have been exaggerated’.
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« Reply #92 on: July 21, 2022, 10:56:02 AM »

Brian Wilson (and the other guys for that matter) could of course be unpredictable and do things with little apparent (immediate) logic. We have Brian taking stabs at "Surf's Up" during the "Wild Honey" sessions.

This guy also cut "Shortenin' Bread" in the studio in 1980 *after* numerous recordings had led to *releasing* the song on their '79 LP.

I could absolutely picture the Beach Boys doing a "Smile session" (either just as "more work on whatever the next album is" or "specifically work for the 'Smile' album") after a press release ostensibly announcing the album's scrapping.

This is mostly a sidebar, but it goes to the idea that all of these guys could have weird short-term memory issues about the music they were recording. I remember a fan running into Al before or after a concert in the 70s, and they asked Al to sign the "Smiley Smile" album. Al grabbed the album and acted as if he was seeing some rare, long-lost item. He asked "where did you get this?" as if the album had never come out or was like the Beatles butcher cover or something. Now, we know Al can be extra weird about inexplicably temporarily forgetting very obvious things. But I think all of the machinations around the band at any given time could kind of blur things very quickly. Look at all the amazing songs they wrote and recorded in the later 60s into the 70s that they just immediately dropped and forgot about, while moving on to record like "Child of Winter" or "Belles of Paris" or whatever.
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« Reply #93 on: July 21, 2022, 10:58:49 AM »

I don’t think it’s crazy to suggest that performing “Smiley Smile” material/arrangements would be easier for the band than “Smile” material/arrangements. It’s important to keep in mind that any live concert scenario would involve performing only a few songs from whatever version had been released.

“Smiley Smile” material (and “Wild Honey” material for that matter) could require less *stripping down* of the arrangements to play well enough on stage. They were going to be doing a few tracks, so in the extreme example, “Getting’ Hungry” would be far, far less demanding on the 1967 tour lineup than performing “Surf’s Up” or the full “Smile” version of “Wind Chimes” or something. Either version of “Vegetables” would have been among the easier tracks to arrange for their live show.

Now, how much this played a role in what happened with “Smile”, I don’t know. I don’t weigh this aspect particularly heavily.

I think all of this becomes much more germane of course when we get to “Wild Honey”, and you can see with those late ’67 shows that they seemed more into trying to do stripped-back versions of “Wild Honey” songs; they required less stripping back than like “Child is Father of the Man” or “Look” or “Surf’s Up”, etc.


They're working with one of the finest composers and arrangers of the time - couldn't they just ask Brian to arrange a version of these tracks which could be played on stage?  Brian played Surf's Up with a piano and a voice...
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« Reply #94 on: July 21, 2022, 11:07:13 AM »

As ever, it is useful to keep in mind that the Beach Boys is not just a band, or group, that makes music.  Before that, they are a family. It so happens that this family makes music and then found commercial success with that music, but they are a family first and foremost.

For the Beach Boys, Smiley Smile is preferable to whatever Smile could or would have been because Smiley is, in their collective mindset, a collective endeavor by the whole band ("Produced by the Beach Boys") with all members engaged in the creation of the album.  The album is recorded in sequestered  family space, Brian Wilson's home, away from the outsiders and various external "bad influences" that are perceived to the cause of Brian's problems.  In this way, Smiley Smile is indeed Smile - but only the Beach Boys' version of Smile, not that of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks.

During the time period in question, they primary operating goal of the collective Beach Boys is not musical, let alone artistic.  As of mid-1967, the main purpose of the Beach Boys is to stay together as a family/band. Their career is, arguably, in jeopardy during the Smile-era, and once Smile collapses, it becomes more apparent that something must be done, and done quickly, to right the ship, or to revert the Beach Boys back to its prior equilibrium state - that of a unified family organization, rather than an artistic dictatorship whereby all members of the family are at the mercy of the whims of one eccentric family member.

Stability is goal number one, because if they cannot do that, then everything else - chart ranking, singles, musical quality, etc. - is moot.  Because of Brian's actions circa 1966-67, the family foundation of the Beach Boys had been in jeopardy.  If that hadn't been the case - for example, if, hypothetically, Brian had hired Tony Asher to help him write happy, up-tempo songs about boy-girl relationships - there wouldn't have been as much of a problem.  If the family foundation is strong and secure (i.e., nobody in the band is going to leave, or go solo, or do anything that threatens the existence of the band) then yes, it is possible to move on and try to make good music. This was the state of things in, say, 1963, and into the first half of 1964. In those days the Beach Boys, as a whole, single entity, is in good shape (especially if they can put some distance between themselves and Murry, which they did)  Brian Wilson, however, as an individual, is progressively in worse and worse shape, as signified by the nervous breakdown at the end of 1964.

Anybody can fill in the rest... it's basically a tug-of-war between Brian and what he represents (both positive and negative) and the Beach Boys business family and what it represents (both positive and negative). Anyway, this dynamic is a significant (though not the only) reason Smiley Smile sounds the way it does in comparison to the Smile Sessions music. Smiley was a function of business necessity (survival) , not just unfettered artistic license on the part of the band members, as if they could easily choose what they wanted Smiley to sound like.

Smiley is a a reflection of the Beach Boys as of mid-1967: talented, but hopelessly dysfunctional.  I appreciate Smiley too, but to really celebrate the album, you need to push the dysfunction and family problems out of your mind and pretend that the Beach Boys are happily unified and are intending to make a cool, weird, left-field album.


No, The Beach Boys are a band that makes music.  Brian has other cousins who are not in the band.  Al and Bruce are no relation at all.  If the group disbanded those who are family would still be family.

If your primary aim is to keep the group (family and non-family) together then it still is way off target since it started the decline in Brian’s creative involvement in the group and his decline in health and into drug taking and remaining in his room which eventually ended with them expelling him from the group.  

But that isn’t the primary aim of a group.  It is to make music and the best music that they can.  As they very soon started trading off Smile - not The Beach Boys version but the version by Brian and VDP - by promising its release and then putting pieces of it on various albums it’s obvious that they realised its worth eventually.  Brian puts a version of it out to great acclaim and then in 2011 The Smile Sessions are released which presumably was approved by the remaining band.

Smiley Smile was labelled ‘produced by the Beach Boys’ yet they over ruled Brian’s wishes not to include GV.  It is made in Brian Wilson’s home not the Beach Boys family home!

Mike Love was not happy with Tony Asher’s lyrical contribution either.  There was a problem during Pet Sounds.

What it basically amounted to was that Brian had musical acumen which the other band members lacked but they didn’t trust him.  Them forcing Brian to abandon 3 Dog Night who he had signed to Brother and then blaming Brian for not keeping them when they went on to be extremely successful is another case in point of them not trusting Brian’s skill and then blaming him for them not doing so. So basically instead of keeping the band together, they shot themselves in the foot.

According to David Anderle Brian did intend to make a good humour album and THAT is Smiley Smile.

This is a vast, vast oversimplification of the rest of the band's attitude towards Brian (and their attitude towards the "Smile" music), especially if we're lumping *all* of the other members together.

There's no successful reductionist approach to trying to explain the demise of "Smile", and certainly no reductionist approach to trying to explain the demise of Brian, both within the group and outside of the group.

And if we're getting into "expelling Brian from the group", which I have to assume means the late 1982 "firing", then that's a *whole* other ball of a wax full of tons of moving parts.


Of course it’s a simplification though I think it was Van Dyke Parks who said something like ‘all of them disliked it, even the lesser known members of the group’.  VDP may feel a little bitterly toward everyone considering what happened and it may be tainting his recollection but you’d think that it would have to be more than 3 who disliked it enough to want it scrapped especially considering the difficulties that decision would cause them.

I’m not actually trying to explain the ‘demise’ of Smile - the reverse. I’m trying to explain how it may have survived and how it was actually ready and that it was only the decision of the band - or the majority of the band - which prevented its release.

As for ‘explaining the demise’ of Brian.  He is not yet dead, not actually nor musically.  He has written and performed music and produced many albums both within and outside the group.

Of course I’m referring to the firing and we all know it was done to try and give Brian the motivation to quit drugs though I’m not sure that saying he couldn’t ever rejoin the group even if he stopped taking drugs would be a motivation to stop, probably a reason to take more.

I think it's pretty well-established that VDP is an important source of information, and that he also has his own spin on things as far as recollections and impressions, and so on. I don't know how much he understood *all* of the elements of the dynamics within the band. Like, how often did he have a long conversation with Al Jardine about how Al felt about the quality of the music, separate from the commercial/business outlook?

I think when anybody, whether it's VDP or fans/scholars, try to say that "all" of the rest of the band felt one way about the "Smile" material at any given point, that's not telling the full story. Yes, I think generalizing and maybe a bit of hyperbole from someone, including VDP, to drive home the point that the band's lack of hearty support for the material played a role in the album's demise, is fine. But when we're delving deep into the story, the reality is that the various members had simultaneous conflicting feelings about the stuff, and how they acted in response also shifted over time. Dennis and Carl could be very supportive of Brian, and also had times where they stood by and let Brian be torn down a bit (e.g. the Redwood tracks). I think Mike is the only member of the group that, at certain points, had actual skepticism about the *music* itself, in terms of just saying "that is really good, interesting material", again totally separate from misgivings about the commercial nature of the material. And even Mike has been able over the years to acknowledge the quality of the some of the material, including Brian's vocal on "Wonderful."

I'm not here to vociferously defend the other band members. But it's a very hazy, complex situation in terms of how they felt and how they acted. It's easy decades later to just look at the material and say "how could anybody stand in the way?." There are many, many reasons. The power dynamic on multiple levels was shifting. The amount of clout people had shifted. It starts to get murky trying to parse the difference between "not championing" something versus actively standing in the way.

And obviously,  by "demise of Brian", I was referring to his several downward tracks, in the mid-70s and then again in the early 80s. And that 1982 "firing", while obviously tied as *everything* in the band's history is to their previous history, was a pretty different animal from what was going on during the "bedroom" years of the mid-70s-ish. Brian was in some ways in a much darker and dangerous place in 1982, and the status of the touring operation was more of a factor in decisions they made about Brian, both positive and negative. By 1982, they weren't really a studio band anymore. They were a touring act that occasionally did studio work.

They were all at the Surfs Up recording session with VDP and David Anderle.  Anderle said there was ‘no ringleader’ that they all expressed concerns so VDP’s remark is substantiated and likely related to the discussion that took place then in December 1966.

I was not telling the full story simply because it is off the topic we are discussing and was only answering the points made by someone else. I am not trying to apportion blame and as I’ve just said Anderle said there was no ringleader and that they all had concerns.

I know what you meant by ‘demise’ I was just pointing out that ‘rumours of [his] death have been exaggerated’.

I've bought every solo album and have seen Brian in concert a dozen-plus times since 1999; I've picked apart the most inane of minutia about his most obscure 80s and 90s material and so on; I've never tried to minimize his continuing his career.

As far as VDP and "Surf's Up" and whatnot, yes, that is an important snapshot. And it may even be representative enough of the general consensus opinion of the rest of the group at a given moment. I'm just saying, the other guys are human beings and were professional musicians and singers with their own feelings and opinions, and I'm not sure how much VDP was having like heart-to-hearts with them about their musical philosophy. And that may not even be VDP's fault. I think we have a pretty decent insight into how the band had misgivings and concerns. Probably both justified and in some cases maybe not so much. But I'm probably honing in a lot here (and it's perhaps becoming more of a sidebar) on how they *felt* about the music. As in, did they think it was good? I think they all knew things like "Wonderful" and "Surf's Up" were amazing pieces. Even Mike. They had and have more of a keen insight into what's *good* than we sometimes might think (listen to Mike's running commentary on that Brian 1976 piano demo reel). The story in some cases is less about what they thought about the music, and more about how factors *outside* of their musical instincts led them away from their musical instincts. Like ego and money related to songwriting credits. What they thought the label wanted. What they thought fans wanted. Not only how they might *perform* music on stage, but how the audience would *respond* to that music in concert. And so on.
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« Reply #95 on: July 21, 2022, 11:07:37 AM »

It's clear that most of the original SMiLE tracks were not worked on for months--held in limbo by the centripetal actions that ensued when there was some form of blowback against the project as a whole. What comes next is two months of grappling with H&V in an attempt to get the right follow-up to GV.

The central point of a thesis that "SMiLE was ready in 1967" hinges on the idea that all of the vocals were recorded for the backing tracks. We know that this is not true, and that efforts went off in related but tangential directions in the first three months of '67.

Clearly H&V in some form would also have appeared on the SMiLE LP, but the waters are very muddy about what that would have been, and it became moot when the band started over for SMILEY SMILE and (mostly) re-recorded H&V (along with "Woody","Wind Chimes," "Wonderful" and "Whistle In").

The fact that they'd not been worked on for awhile was part of the lingering crisis about what to do, one that didn't get resolved until (as GF suggests) the band returned from its April-May tour with their own agenda items for SMiLE and the band's future. The album was in limbo, but the Engemann memo suggests that Brian was trying to keep SMiLE in play as a separate entity, at least for awhile. Did he give up and abandon all that when he was confronted by Mike etal over Redwood?

SMiLE was almost ready in '67, for sure. But the impediments that cropped up in terms of taking it over the finish line just got larger and more onerous. The more Brian worked on workarounds, the farther the finish line seemed to be. Carl's description omits the pain involved in it, but otherwise has the ring of truth.

My point was that much of the work was complete prior to the scrapping, that the same reference was used for Smiley Smile as was used for Smile so it may have been possible for any unfinished work to have been done in Brian’s studio quoting that reference.  Indeed Carl’s statement which Guitar Fool posted said that  Smile was completed.

It may have been the Redwood incident but apparently there was also a problem with Capitol and perhaps that’s when the Brother logo was removed.
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« Reply #96 on: July 21, 2022, 11:17:25 AM »

I don’t think it’s crazy to suggest that performing “Smiley Smile” material/arrangements would be easier for the band than “Smile” material/arrangements. It’s important to keep in mind that any live concert scenario would involve performing only a few songs from whatever version had been released.

“Smiley Smile” material (and “Wild Honey” material for that matter) could require less *stripping down* of the arrangements to play well enough on stage. They were going to be doing a few tracks, so in the extreme example, “Getting’ Hungry” would be far, far less demanding on the 1967 tour lineup than performing “Surf’s Up” or the full “Smile” version of “Wind Chimes” or something. Either version of “Vegetables” would have been among the easier tracks to arrange for their live show.

Now, how much this played a role in what happened with “Smile”, I don’t know. I don’t weigh this aspect particularly heavily.

I think all of this becomes much more germane of course when we get to “Wild Honey”, and you can see with those late ’67 shows that they seemed more into trying to do stripped-back versions of “Wild Honey” songs; they required less stripping back than like “Child is Father of the Man” or “Look” or “Surf’s Up”, etc.


They're working with one of the finest composers and arrangers of the time - couldn't they just ask Brian to arrange a version of these tracks which could be played on stage?  Brian played Surf's Up with a piano and a voice...

The question with a lot of bands around this time, including the Beach Boys and the Beatles, was why didn't they just add more ancillary musicians on stage to perform either elements they couldn't, or elements needed to fill the sound out?

It just wasn't happening at that time. Maybe it was a money issue. Maybe it was just not what bands did in 1966/67.

I don't think they'd even need Brian to arrange the stuff for concert. They did that just fine on other material. I mean, I think they actually did a pretty good job of doing "Wild Honey" and "Friends" material in 1967/68 with minimal additional musicians.

Again, I think a lot of factors were at play. Even by 1966/67, there might have been a bit of animosity or resentment towards Brian for not being out on the road. And that could fork out into multiple areas. Resentment because they're doing the schlepping out on the road and he's not. Resentment because Brian isn't the one who has to play bass on those songs; they've got to learn the parts. Resentment that they had to face a possibly stone-faced audience who is confused by the material. Some of these things would have been more legit/real concerns than others. And some of these concerns wouldn't just be directed at Brian.

Keep in mind that the band past the time of even Carl's death were still usually *very hesitant* about doing non-hits in concert. They obviously have specific eras where they felt freer to do so (e.g. early-mid 70s, etc.). But since the 60s, and certainly into the 80s and 90s, they seemed *convinced* that doing a lot of deep cuts or new stuff was *this close* to like making the audience walk out in protest or something. It's fascinating. They still pushed through and did it sometimes of course. I think even in 1967 they were self-conscious about doing new material. You hear more awkward semi-apologetic tones on some of those live shows from the guys rather than a feeling of "holy s**t, you need to hear this amazing new song!"
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« Reply #97 on: July 21, 2022, 11:28:13 AM »

As ever, it is useful to keep in mind that the Beach Boys is not just a band, or group, that makes music.  Before that, they are a family. It so happens that this family makes music and then found commercial success with that music, but they are a family first and foremost.

For the Beach Boys, Smiley Smile is preferable to whatever Smile could or would have been because Smiley is, in their collective mindset, a collective endeavor by the whole band ("Produced by the Beach Boys") with all members engaged in the creation of the album.  The album is recorded in sequestered  family space, Brian Wilson's home, away from the outsiders and various external "bad influences" that are perceived to the cause of Brian's problems.  In this way, Smiley Smile is indeed Smile - but only the Beach Boys' version of Smile, not that of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks.

During the time period in question, they primary operating goal of the collective Beach Boys is not musical, let alone artistic.  As of mid-1967, the main purpose of the Beach Boys is to stay together as a family/band. Their career is, arguably, in jeopardy during the Smile-era, and once Smile collapses, it becomes more apparent that something must be done, and done quickly, to right the ship, or to revert the Beach Boys back to its prior equilibrium state - that of a unified family organization, rather than an artistic dictatorship whereby all members of the family are at the mercy of the whims of one eccentric family member.

Stability is goal number one, because if they cannot do that, then everything else - chart ranking, singles, musical quality, etc. - is moot.  Because of Brian's actions circa 1966-67, the family foundation of the Beach Boys had been in jeopardy.  If that hadn't been the case - for example, if, hypothetically, Brian had hired Tony Asher to help him write happy, up-tempo songs about boy-girl relationships - there wouldn't have been as much of a problem.  If the family foundation is strong and secure (i.e., nobody in the band is going to leave, or go solo, or do anything that threatens the existence of the band) then yes, it is possible to move on and try to make good music. This was the state of things in, say, 1963, and into the first half of 1964. In those days the Beach Boys, as a whole, single entity, is in good shape (especially if they can put some distance between themselves and Murry, which they did)  Brian Wilson, however, as an individual, is progressively in worse and worse shape, as signified by the nervous breakdown at the end of 1964.

Anybody can fill in the rest... it's basically a tug-of-war between Brian and what he represents (both positive and negative) and the Beach Boys business family and what it represents (both positive and negative). Anyway, this dynamic is a significant (though not the only) reason Smiley Smile sounds the way it does in comparison to the Smile Sessions music. Smiley was a function of business necessity (survival) , not just unfettered artistic license on the part of the band members, as if they could easily choose what they wanted Smiley to sound like.

Smiley is a a reflection of the Beach Boys as of mid-1967: talented, but hopelessly dysfunctional.  I appreciate Smiley too, but to really celebrate the album, you need to push the dysfunction and family problems out of your mind and pretend that the Beach Boys are happily unified and are intending to make a cool, weird, left-field album.


No, The Beach Boys are a band that makes music.  Brian has other cousins who are not in the band.  Al and Bruce are no relation at all.  If the group disbanded those who are family would still be family.

If your primary aim is to keep the group (family and non-family) together then it still is way off target since it started the decline in Brian’s creative involvement in the group and his decline in health and into drug taking and remaining in his room which eventually ended with them expelling him from the group.  

But that isn’t the primary aim of a group.  It is to make music and the best music that they can.  As they very soon started trading off Smile - not The Beach Boys version but the version by Brian and VDP - by promising its release and then putting pieces of it on various albums it’s obvious that they realised its worth eventually.  Brian puts a version of it out to great acclaim and then in 2011 The Smile Sessions are released which presumably was approved by the remaining band.

Smiley Smile was labelled ‘produced by the Beach Boys’ yet they over ruled Brian’s wishes not to include GV.  It is made in Brian Wilson’s home not the Beach Boys family home!

Mike Love was not happy with Tony Asher’s lyrical contribution either.  There was a problem during Pet Sounds.

What it basically amounted to was that Brian had musical acumen which the other band members lacked but they didn’t trust him.  Them forcing Brian to abandon 3 Dog Night who he had signed to Brother and then blaming Brian for not keeping them when they went on to be extremely successful is another case in point of them not trusting Brian’s skill and then blaming him for them not doing so. So basically instead of keeping the band together, they shot themselves in the foot.

According to David Anderle Brian did intend to make a good humour album and THAT is Smiley Smile.

This is a vast, vast oversimplification of the rest of the band's attitude towards Brian (and their attitude towards the "Smile" music), especially if we're lumping *all* of the other members together.

There's no successful reductionist approach to trying to explain the demise of "Smile", and certainly no reductionist approach to trying to explain the demise of Brian, both within the group and outside of the group.

And if we're getting into "expelling Brian from the group", which I have to assume means the late 1982 "firing", then that's a *whole* other ball of a wax full of tons of moving parts.


Of course it’s a simplification though I think it was Van Dyke Parks who said something like ‘all of them disliked it, even the lesser known members of the group’.  VDP may feel a little bitterly toward everyone considering what happened and it may be tainting his recollection but you’d think that it would have to be more than 3 who disliked it enough to want it scrapped especially considering the difficulties that decision would cause them.

I’m not actually trying to explain the ‘demise’ of Smile - the reverse. I’m trying to explain how it may have survived and how it was actually ready and that it was only the decision of the band - or the majority of the band - which prevented its release.

As for ‘explaining the demise’ of Brian.  He is not yet dead, not actually nor musically.  He has written and performed music and produced many albums both within and outside the group.

Of course I’m referring to the firing and we all know it was done to try and give Brian the motivation to quit drugs though I’m not sure that saying he couldn’t ever rejoin the group even if he stopped taking drugs would be a motivation to stop, probably a reason to take more.

I think it's pretty well-established that VDP is an important source of information, and that he also has his own spin on things as far as recollections and impressions, and so on. I don't know how much he understood *all* of the elements of the dynamics within the band. Like, how often did he have a long conversation with Al Jardine about how Al felt about the quality of the music, separate from the commercial/business outlook?

I think when anybody, whether it's VDP or fans/scholars, try to say that "all" of the rest of the band felt one way about the "Smile" material at any given point, that's not telling the full story. Yes, I think generalizing and maybe a bit of hyperbole from someone, including VDP, to drive home the point that the band's lack of hearty support for the material played a role in the album's demise, is fine. But when we're delving deep into the story, the reality is that the various members had simultaneous conflicting feelings about the stuff, and how they acted in response also shifted over time. Dennis and Carl could be very supportive of Brian, and also had times where they stood by and let Brian be torn down a bit (e.g. the Redwood tracks). I think Mike is the only member of the group that, at certain points, had actual skepticism about the *music* itself, in terms of just saying "that is really good, interesting material", again totally separate from misgivings about the commercial nature of the material. And even Mike has been able over the years to acknowledge the quality of the some of the material, including Brian's vocal on "Wonderful."

I'm not here to vociferously defend the other band members. But it's a very hazy, complex situation in terms of how they felt and how they acted. It's easy decades later to just look at the material and say "how could anybody stand in the way?." There are many, many reasons. The power dynamic on multiple levels was shifting. The amount of clout people had shifted. It starts to get murky trying to parse the difference between "not championing" something versus actively standing in the way.

And obviously,  by "demise of Brian", I was referring to his several downward tracks, in the mid-70s and then again in the early 80s. And that 1982 "firing", while obviously tied as *everything* in the band's history is to their previous history, was a pretty different animal from what was going on during the "bedroom" years of the mid-70s-ish. Brian was in some ways in a much darker and dangerous place in 1982, and the status of the touring operation was more of a factor in decisions they made about Brian, both positive and negative. By 1982, they weren't really a studio band anymore. They were a touring act that occasionally did studio work.

They were all at the Surfs Up recording session with VDP and David Anderle.  Anderle said there was ‘no ringleader’ that they all expressed concerns so VDP’s remark is substantiated and likely related to the discussion that took place then in December 1966.

I was not telling the full story simply because it is off the topic we are discussing and was only answering the points made by someone else. I am not trying to apportion blame and as I’ve just said Anderle said there was no ringleader and that they all had concerns.

I know what you meant by ‘demise’ I was just pointing out that ‘rumours of [his] death have been exaggerated’.

I've bought every solo album and have seen Brian in concert a dozen-plus times since 1999; I've picked apart the most inane of minutia about his most obscure 80s and 90s material and so on; I've never tried to minimize his continuing his career.

As far as VDP and "Surf's Up" and whatnot, yes, that is an important snapshot. And it may even be representative enough of the general consensus opinion of the rest of the group at a given moment. I'm just saying, the other guys are human beings and were professional musicians and singers with their own feelings and opinions, and I'm not sure how much VDP was having like heart-to-hearts with them about their musical philosophy. And that may not even be VDP's fault. I think we have a pretty decent insight into how the band had misgivings and concerns. Probably both justified and in some cases maybe not so much. But I'm probably honing in a lot here (and it's perhaps becoming more of a sidebar) on how they *felt* about the music. As in, did they think it was good? I think they all knew things like "Wonderful" and "Surf's Up" were amazing pieces. Even Mike. They had and have more of a keen insight into what's *good* than we sometimes might think (listen to Mike's running commentary on that Brian 1976 piano demo reel). The story in some cases is less about what they thought about the music, and more about how factors *outside* of their musical instincts led them away from their musical instincts. Like ego and money related to songwriting credits. What they thought the label wanted. What they thought fans wanted. Not only how they might *perform* music on stage, but how the audience would *respond* to that music in concert. And so on.
orry I didn’t mean to upset you I’m just being a little facetious.  TBH I’ve always liked your posts and admired your breadth of knowledge.  Whilst I’ve been a fan since 1968 and have all of their albums and Brian's albums and seen the Beach Boys play in all flavours and Brian so many times I’ve lost count, but don’t have the memory or the interest in the minutia to remember it. 

As I said I’m not trying to apportion blame but I do get a bit fed up with the ‘they’re all a big happy family” description especially when in the same post they then describe them as dysfunctional.   But however you look at it whoever thought Smile was a bad idea was wrong.  Music was changing and the not all the fans wanted sex on a surf board. Smile has been a selling point for several albums since and is still hugely popular and influential.  I remember during a concert in London in the 70s we were asked what we wanted to hear them play “Surf’s Up” was the deafening response - they played “Surfin USA”!
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« Reply #98 on: July 21, 2022, 12:51:31 PM »

From the fan point of view, it’s easy to come to a number of conclusions (or I guess just opinions) about “Smile.”

It’s interesting if we start getting into whether not putting it out was a bad idea. On many levels, on many fronts, the answer is of course an easy yes. It’s amazing music. Even those that don’t like the modular music approach can’t deny the pieces are stunning.

But if we’re looking at how “Smile” would have been received in 1967, that’s a whole other beast. I don’t think anybody can say with any certainty how it would have performed with critics or on the charts. But I think it’s not outrageous to say that it’s unlikely it would have surpassed something like Sgt. Pepper on the charts or with the broad critical consensus. It would have likely been received by the enlightened both in and outside of the industry in a similar if not grander fashion than “Pet Sounds” had been.

Would it have led to more hits for the band in the immediate? I don’t know. I think it’s fair to say quite possibly not. It quickly becomes a case of stacking a lot of “What Ifs” on top of each other. But one scenario is that things, at least in the immediate aftermath of a release of “Smile”, would have played out similarly to how it actually did, in terms of musical releases and chart performance/sales. “Smile” may have been less noticed and met with more confusion than “Pet Sounds.” We obviously would not have then seen a “Smiley Smile”, but something akin to “Wild Honey” could have easily materialized I think.

I don’t think if “Smile” had been released that we would have then seen the setlist there on out filled with a bunch of “Smile” selections. They would not have been playing “Wind Chimes” and “Look” at Anaheim Stadium in 1976.

“Smile” has been discussed so heavily, I’m sure someone else has already floated the theory that things would have still played out much the same had it been released. I’m not even endorsing that theory; it’s a few too many what if’s I think. But it’s interesting to ponder the idea of a universe where the BB story played out pretty much the same in the studio and on the road, only we had a finished “Smile” instead of “Smiley Smile”, and I guess “20/20” and “Surf’s Up” would have been somewhat different?
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« Reply #99 on: July 21, 2022, 01:27:53 PM »

From the fan point of view, it’s easy to come to a number of conclusions (or I guess just opinions) about “Smile.”

It’s interesting if we start getting into whether not putting it out was a bad idea. On many levels, on many fronts, the answer is of course an easy yes. It’s amazing music. Even those that don’t like the modular music approach can’t deny the pieces are stunning.

But if we’re looking at how “Smile” would have been received in 1967, that’s a whole other beast. I don’t think anybody can say with any certainty how it would have performed with critics or on the charts. But I think it’s not outrageous to say that it’s unlikely it would have surpassed something like Sgt. Pepper on the charts or with the broad critical consensus. It would have likely been received by the enlightened both in and outside of the industry in a similar if not grander fashion than “Pet Sounds” had been.

Would it have led to more hits for the band in the immediate? I don’t know. I think it’s fair to say quite possibly not. It quickly becomes a case of stacking a lot of “What Ifs” on top of each other. But one scenario is that things, at least in the immediate aftermath of a release of “Smile”, would have played out similarly to how it actually did, in terms of musical releases and chart performance/sales. “Smile” may have been less noticed and met with more confusion than “Pet Sounds.” We obviously would not have then seen a “Smiley Smile”, but something akin to “Wild Honey” could have easily materialized I think.

I don’t think if “Smile” had been released that we would have then seen the setlist there on out filled with a bunch of “Smile” selections. They would not have been playing “Wind Chimes” and “Look” at Anaheim Stadium in 1976.

“Smile” has been discussed so heavily, I’m sure someone else has already floated the theory that things would have still played out much the same had it been released. I’m not even endorsing that theory; it’s a few too many what if’s I think. But it’s interesting to ponder the idea of a universe where the BB story played out pretty much the same in the studio and on the road, only we had a finished “Smile” instead of “Smiley Smile”, and I guess “20/20” and “Surf’s Up” would have been somewhat different?


I don't think it's possible to know what would have happened if Smile had been released.  The Beach Boys existing fan base would probably not have taken to it - although some would - the UK fans especially.  But they may have attracted other new followers with more esoteric interests and with less of a high value on hits.  If there had been any kind of success in this way then perhaps Brian would have been able to do what he wanted which was to progress musically.  The band should really have split instead of just making each other unhappy and things may have turned out better for Brian personally. 
Perhaps Brian would have been prepared to throw them a hit single now and again had they separated and in any case Carl and Dennis were beginning to write their own music and so could have supported the band.  Another alternative that they could continue with the touring band and release records of their own individually under their own name.  The current touring band cannot make music under the name of The Beach Boys but have been making a comfortable living out of it for years.
On the other hand a complete flop may have been curtains and the plus side of withholding of Smile was it allowed its legend to carry on growing until in the end it was the fans who caused it to be released.

As you say there are too many what if's.
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