SMiLE was ready in 1967 - discuss

[WillJC]

There's a lot going on in here and I don't want to wade into all of it, but I do want to comment on a few things.

The silly voice slating the Love to Say Da Da takes is engineer Jimmy Hilton, who sounds a lot like Brian. Brian was out on the studio floor playing on all three sessions. That has nothing to do with who ran or produced the sessions - it's just who that voice is.

Capitol didn't cancel a session on May 19th, Brian did. Capitol had nothing to do with the studio time Brian did or didn't book for himself. He cancelled a number of recording sessions over those months out of not feeling it, vibrations being off, etc.

Brian recording Love to Say Da Da at Gold Star really doesn't bring any contradiction to Taylor's press statement. Since Christmas (mysterious excursions into Surf's Up and Jasper Dailey aside), Brian's entire focus in the studio had essentially been to produce a single and its B-side, and that single would've ended up on the next Beach Boys album, which at the time was supposed to be Smile. The rest of the project was hanging on standby with Brian giving little consideration to the other songs as he deconstructed and transplanted musical ideas from various pieces into Heroes. As the months went by, Brian got stuck in a rut, wrapped up in the lawsuit, wrapped up in personal difficulties, lost the ability to judge the merits of the material after spending too long with it, lost sight of the original vision, couldn't take the pressure of expectation, became creatively dissatisfied with what he was doing, and wanted to start fresh on something new that he could enjoy making ('non-competitive' music, as Mike put it).

There's nothing evidentially tying the May Love to Say Da Da sessions to Smile. If anything, Brian doing that strongly supports that the album he was supposed to deliver had been put on the shelf - these are a run of sessions for new music not among the 12 song titles printed on the back sleeves for the first time since fall '66, besides You're Welcome and the embryonic December Da Da (neither of which were done on the books with a master number assignment). Yes, it's not really a production departure yet - but so? Taylor's piece had been published, obviously at Brian's behest, and here's Brian working on new material outside of the album he'd promised to deliver. In any case, something wasn't clicking with him, as he cancelled a session and never used the track.

When the Beach Boys returned from Europe they started working on more new material (You're With Me Tonight and Cool Cool Water, both of which were potentially B-sides for Vegetables), but they're at Western, there's a harpsichord, there's a session bassist, and the production approach isn't practically any different to most of those sessions throughout the Smile era for Wonderful, He Gives Speeches, Surf's Up, You're Welcome, all the Heroes and Vegetables sections, parts of Do You Like Worms, Wind Chimes, etc. The only thing that sets Da Da apart is it was the last ensemble Wrecking Crew track recorded at Gold Star, but those were already few and far between as '66 moved into '67. Then Brian finally gets the home studio that he’s been asking after and has a wind of inspiration to return to Heroes and Villains as the single following a rewrite, so they spend a few days finishing that off at the house and it’s… basically the same thing? He’s in a new place and has a new organ, sure, but the actual arrangement and production style doesn’t differ in any meaningful way to what he’d been doing with Heroes at Columbia months earlier. On the heels of that, the environment and available instrumentation inspires a new arrangement of Vegetables – and in my mind that’s when a new sound clicks and Smiley Smile is conceptually born. Brian had been sliding towards that type of organic-feeling minimalism for a long time. The transition up to then is natural and traceable and obvious. It’s just a kick up to the next level, really – he jumped into a new bag and got excited by it, to put it in Brian lingo.

I think to say that there’s any one single creative leap from Smile to Smiley Smile and that it can be pegged to Love to Say Da Da is an extremely reductive way to look at it all. But on a practical level, as in, “the next Beach Boys album won’t be Smile as conceived in 1966,” it’s the Taylor article.

For posterity, here’s that whole thing, Disk & Music Echo, 6th May 1967:

BEACH BOYS fly in for a hot tour - and this is why there’s no new single to launch it...

BEACH BOYS WEEK IN BRITAIN! Out of a sleek, silver jet at London Airport come Igor Horoshevsky, Frank St Peters, Jim Carther and Richard Thompson - plus the five better-known Beach Boys…
    Who, then, are Igor and Co.? A fair question. Igor is up there in huge letters on the side of the Beach Boys’ aircraft. “The Beach Boys and Igor,” says the sign, without explanation or apology.
    The answer is the fine big band the group promised last time they came to Britain.
    Frank plays saxophone, flute and clarinet; Jim plays flute and sax; Richard dabbles in flugelhorn, harpsichord, flute, organ, saxophone and clarinet.
    And who’s this Horoshevsky cat? He plays cello. And he will steer the band on a path of rich, red music across the nation and set these isles once again vibrating good and strong to the Beach Boys.
It will be fine music this tour. It wasn’t all bad last November, either, when the Beach Boys’ potential new LP “Dumb Angel” was about to become “Smile” far away in the Beverly Hills at Brian Wilson’s piano set grandly in the sandbox in the drawing room.
    So why, people may be asking, has the genius Wilson not offered us a new single since “Good Vibrations?” Where, too, is the album? It’s a long story…
    Last November, as the Beach Boys toured Britain, Wilson had NEARLY completed “Heroes And Villains,” scheduled as their follow-up single.
    The rest of the “Smile” LP songs lay in dry dock, in varying states of completion. And when Carl, Dennis, Al, Mike and Bruce - full of pubs, laden with Portobello Road, wreathed in holiday smiles and British pop-battle honours - inhaled again the sun-sealed smog of their home-Golden State, the final construction work began.
BUT ALAS…
    Brian Wilson began to stare at the glittering ships of tape and as the day of the launch became nearer than a date on the never-never calendar, he gazed at his plans and he turned his mind’s ear inwards and the longer he stared and the more he heard, the clearer it became that he was now in his jet age, building steamships.
    Which couldn’t be right.
    In truth, every beautifully designed, finely-wrought inspirationally-welded piece of music made these last months by Brian and his Beach Boy craftsmen has been SCRAPPED.
    Not destroyed, but scrapped. For what Wilson seals in a can and destroys is scrapped.
    As an average fan of the Beach Boys, I think it is bitterly disappointing. But it isn’t as if one is bereft of the group’s essential spirit - there are 14 albums, many of them incredibly pure and full of life and lovely.
    One is, however, deprived of renewal. It is like waiting for an heir when the pregnancy is total. It has to come. Has to.
    What, then? I don’t know. The Beach Boys don’t know. Brian Wilson, God grant him peace of mind … he doesn’t know.
    He is waiting with his nearest Mike and Al and Bruce and his dearest Carl and Dennis. And if it is difficult for them, it is absolutely unbearable for Brian.
    It has to come. New single, new album.
    Until it does, I trust we can all be patient and enjoy the substance of the Beach Boy family which is still young and new, and continually justifying its place in an exclusive pop hierarchy which has never admitted charlatans or pretenders.
    “THE BEACH BOYS AND IGOR” are flying.
    Switch off the lights, turn on “Pet Sounds,” and you know that there are in the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson some eclectic, elegant, ethereal elements which transcend the transitory Top 30, and which makes nonsense of “now music.”
    The Beach Boys are with you now.
    For now they are yours.
    Enjoy them.
    That is why they came.

[guitarfool2002]

You seem very certain the Taylor piece was published "at Brian's behest". How do you know this with any degree of certainty or proof? It was never proven where or how Taylor got the word (or if he even did) to publish that statement.

[WillJC]

Derek... worked for their Beach Boys as their publicist? Are you honestly contending that there's any possibility it didn't run through Brian, or that someone else passed the word to Derek who didn't communicate with Brian at all before writing and publishing it in a magazine?

[guitarfool2002]

Derek... worked for their Beach Boys as their publicist? Are you seriously contending that there's any possibility it didn't run through Brian, or that someone else passed the word to Derek who didn't communicate with Brian at all before writing and publishing it?

If Derek was their publicist, and had all this information about the tour, the musicians, even the airplane, then why were the Beach Boys seemingly unaware the album had been "scrapped" when interviewed shortly *after* this piece was published? Read the comment from Bruce especially, but also Mike and Dennis too, they're talking as if the album is still being worked on and will come out. That's odd considering their publicist probably would have told them at some point, right?

[WillJC]

Derek... worked for their Beach Boys as their publicist? Are you seriously contending that there's any possibility it didn't run through Brian, or that someone else passed the word to Derek who didn't communicate with Brian at all before writing and publishing it?

If Derek was their publicist, and had all this information about the tour, the musicians, even the airplane, then why were the Beach Boys seemingly unaware the album had been "scrapped" when interviewed shortly *after* this piece was published? Read the comment from Bruce especially, but also Mike and Dennis too, they're talking as if the album is still being worked on and will come out. That's odd considering their publicist probably would have told them at some point, right?

"If Derek was their publicist"? He... was? He was that? Yes?

It's not exactly a gigantic semantic leap from "scrapped" to "Brian doesn't want to use most of the things he's recorded over the last several months and complete the list of songs the record label are expecting", even if at the time, there was a thought that he would eventually return to the material after clearing the air.

[guitarfool2002]

Derek... worked for their Beach Boys as their publicist? Are you seriously contending that there's any possibility it didn't run through Brian, or that someone else passed the word to Derek who didn't communicate with Brian at all before writing and publishing it?

If Derek was their publicist, and had all this information about the tour, the musicians, even the airplane, then why were the Beach Boys seemingly unaware the album had been "scrapped" when interviewed shortly *after* this piece was published? Read the comment from Bruce especially, but also Mike and Dennis too, they're talking as if the album is still being worked on and will come out. That's odd considering their publicist probably would have told them at some point, right?

"If Derek was their publicist"? He... was? He was that? Yes?

It's not exactly a gigantic semantic leap from "scrapped" to "Brian doesn't want to use most of the things he's recorded over the last several months and complete the list of songs the record label are expecting".

Word is they were also working with another publicist for that leg of the tour, I'll get his name when I can. But seriously though, no one told the band that the album had been scrapped after Taylor's article appeared? They talk as if they had no idea, and that Smile would be coming out. Not that it was scrapped, shelved, put in the can, or whatever semantic would fit. 

[Don Malcolm]

--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.

Good point, GF. I tend to think that Capitol was again hedging its bets with the band at this point with a Best of vol 2, given that they'd gone so long without a new LP. (Which seems pretty wacky to us today, but they really wanted--and expected--three LPs a year in those days).

"Gettin' Hungry" was only kinda sorta a Beach Boys single; its release was rather perfunctory and was put out as "Brian and Mike." A certain amount of fence-mending and ego-stroking might have been at work there. And Capitol probably figured that it was worth it to do so in order to mark time for an impending LP release that they may have already suspected was going to have some amount of backlash associated with it.

My point was that the turnaround mechanism at Capitol at that time would pretty easily accommodate a month from mastering to in-the-stores. So the decision to do a Best of vol 2 must have been made in May or June, when things were still up in the air regarding exactly what was coming from the band in terms of a new LP. As it turned out, Best of vol 2 was a misfire, only getting up to the 50s on the sales charts.

But here's a question I don't think we've ever discussed previously. Presumably Capitol and the band overruled Brian about putting GV on SMILEY SMILE. If Brian had prevailed, however, you'd have a big hole on Side Two; without GV, the other five tracks amount to about 11 minutes of music. Seems that they would've needed to come up with something else to put on the record--but what would it have been? "Good Time Mama"?!

BTW, thanks to Will for grabbing the Taylor piece--I hadn't seen it in years and its tone confirms some things I remember sensing in it when I first encountered it. It's as paradoxical as anything else that surfaced in the "nether region" period--frankly, it reads like Taylor had downed half a bottle of single malt before he sat down at the typewriter. It confirms the idea that Taylor was channeling the strangeness that was abounding around the project and the band--and, of course, Brian--and was making his own odd call for help as he found himself slipping down the rabbit hole with his clients.

It's almost as if Derek is a go-between for Brian and the band, letting them know that he's open to some parallel prospect for the future--SMiLE "scrapped" as a Beach Boy project, with something else TBD in its place.

And the best guess that I think is available to us is that by doing so, he still hoped to keep most of SMiLE intact as his own project, while moving on to some rapprochement with the band. That explains Engemann's memo.

Only what happened was that the band, faced with Brian's depression in the "fall breaking back to winter" in 68-69, decided that they had no choice but to take away his sovereignty over the SMiLE material. Turning it into a "myth" and an ongoing mystery, a bauble they could use as needed.

[guitarfool2002]

Arthur Howes was the promoter for that May '67 leg of the tour, a man named Roger Easterby was working at Howes' office as the publicist for the tour. Derek Taylor eventually stopped working for the band as their official hired publicist, I can't recall when that happened though.

[Bicyclerider]

Derek... worked for their Beach Boys as their publicist? Are you seriously contending that there's any possibility it didn't run through Brian, or that someone else passed the word to Derek who didn't communicate with Brian at all before writing and publishing it?

If Derek was their publicist, and had all this information about the tour, the musicians, even the airplane, then why were the Beach Boys seemingly unaware the album had been "scrapped" when interviewed shortly *after* this piece was published? Read the comment from Bruce especially, but also Mike and Dennis too, they're talking as if the album is still being worked on and will come out. That's odd considering their publicist probably would have told them at some point, right?

"If Derek was their publicist"? He... was? He was that? Yes?

It's not exactly a gigantic semantic leap from "scrapped" to "Brian doesn't want to use most of the things he's recorded over the last several months and complete the list of songs the record label are expecting".

Word is they were also working with another publicist for that leg of the tour, I'll get his name when I can. But seriously though, no one told the band that the album had been scrapped after Taylor's article appeared? They talk as if they had no idea, and that Smile would be coming out. Not that it was scrapped, shelved, put in the can, or whatever semantic would fit. 

There are two different Smile albums at play here.  There is the originally planned 12 track Smile with the associated tracks and songs Brian worked on from August 66- March 67.  This is what Derek Taylor is saying has been sealed in a can and "scrapped."  Someone - presumably Brian - informed him that he was abandoning these tracks (but not necessarily the songs, as we see with Smiley).  As has been pointed out, Dada was Brian starting something new, whether for a B side of a single or a track for an album.

Then there is Smile as the name of "the next Beach Boys album" - whatever Brian decided it would consist of.  That's what the Beach Boys are talking about.  An album was continuing to be worked on.  An album would eventually come out.  And to be fair to them, Brian probably wasn't communicating to Mike, Al, Carl et al what he was going to exclude or include on "the next album" from what he had been recording - as it turns out very little was included, only about half of Heroes and the end of Vegetables.

[WillJC]

Derek... worked for their Beach Boys as their publicist? Are you seriously contending that there's any possibility it didn't run through Brian, or that someone else passed the word to Derek who didn't communicate with Brian at all before writing and publishing it?

If Derek was their publicist, and had all this information about the tour, the musicians, even the airplane, then why were the Beach Boys seemingly unaware the album had been "scrapped" when interviewed shortly *after* this piece was published? Read the comment from Bruce especially, but also Mike and Dennis too, they're talking as if the album is still being worked on and will come out. That's odd considering their publicist probably would have told them at some point, right?

"If Derek was their publicist"? He... was? He was that? Yes?

It's not exactly a gigantic semantic leap from "scrapped" to "Brian doesn't want to use most of the things he's recorded over the last several months and complete the list of songs the record label are expecting".

Word is they were also working with another publicist for that leg of the tour, I'll get his name when I can. But seriously though, no one told the band that the album had been scrapped after Taylor's article appeared? They talk as if they had no idea, and that Smile would be coming out. Not that it was scrapped, shelved, put in the can, or whatever semantic would fit. 

There are two different Smile albums at play here.  There is the originally planned 12 track Smile with the associated tracks and songs Brian worked on from August 66- March 67.  This is what Derek Taylor is saying has been sealed in a can and "scrapped."  Someone - presumably Brian - informed him that he was abandoning these tracks (but not necessarily the songs, as we see with Smiley).  As has been pointed out, Dada was Brian starting something new, whether for a B side of a single or a track for an album.

Then there is Smile as the name of "the next Beach Boys album" - whatever Brian decided it would consist of.  That's what the Beach Boys are talking about.  An album was continuing to be worked on.  An album would eventually come out.  And to be fair to them, Brian probably wasn't communicating to Mike, Al, Carl et al what he was going to exclude or include on "the next album" from what he had been recording - as it turns out very little was included, only about half of Heroes and the end of Vegetables.

Exactly, thanks for succinctly putting that into words.

[guitarfool2002]

Derek... worked for their Beach Boys as their publicist? Are you seriously contending that there's any possibility it didn't run through Brian, or that someone else passed the word to Derek who didn't communicate with Brian at all before writing and publishing it?

If Derek was their publicist, and had all this information about the tour, the musicians, even the airplane, then why were the Beach Boys seemingly unaware the album had been "scrapped" when interviewed shortly *after* this piece was published? Read the comment from Bruce especially, but also Mike and Dennis too, they're talking as if the album is still being worked on and will come out. That's odd considering their publicist probably would have told them at some point, right?

"If Derek was their publicist"? He... was? He was that? Yes?

It's not exactly a gigantic semantic leap from "scrapped" to "Brian doesn't want to use most of the things he's recorded over the last several months and complete the list of songs the record label are expecting".

Word is they were also working with another publicist for that leg of the tour, I'll get his name when I can. But seriously though, no one told the band that the album had been scrapped after Taylor's article appeared? They talk as if they had no idea, and that Smile would be coming out. Not that it was scrapped, shelved, put in the can, or whatever semantic would fit. 

There are two different Smile albums at play here.  There is the originally planned 12 track Smile with the associated tracks and songs Brian worked on from August 66- March 67.  This is what Derek Taylor is saying has been sealed in a can and "scrapped."  Someone - presumably Brian - informed him that he was abandoning these tracks (but not necessarily the songs, as we see with Smiley).  As has been pointed out, Dada was Brian starting something new, whether for a B side of a single or a track for an album.

Then there is Smile as the name of "the next Beach Boys album" - whatever Brian decided it would consist of.  That's what the Beach Boys are talking about.  An album was continuing to be worked on.  An album would eventually come out.  And to be fair to them, Brian probably wasn't communicating to Mike, Al, Carl et al what he was going to exclude or include on "the next album" from what he had been recording - as it turns out very little was included, only about half of Heroes and the end of Vegetables.

Two quick points: First, DaDa wasn't new at all, it was Brian's "All Day" from  January '67 with more instruments.

Second, consider what Carl said in the LA Times interview:

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)

"We didn't scrap them". Isn't it interesting that Carl used the word "scrap", as if he were responding to the Taylor comment 4 months later?

[Galaxy Liz]

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)

Thanks so much for finding this.  I really appreciate it.  Your wealth of knowledge is amazing.

[Galaxy Liz]

Derek... worked for their Beach Boys as their publicist? Are you seriously contending that there's any possibility it didn't run through Brian, or that someone else passed the word to Derek who didn't communicate with Brian at all before writing and publishing it?

If Derek was their publicist, and had all this information about the tour, the musicians, even the airplane, then why were the Beach Boys seemingly unaware the album had been "scrapped" when interviewed shortly *after* this piece was published? Read the comment from Bruce especially, but also Mike and Dennis too, they're talking as if the album is still being worked on and will come out. That's odd considering their publicist probably would have told them at some point, right?

"If Derek was their publicist"? He... was? He was that? Yes?

It's not exactly a gigantic semantic leap from "scrapped" to "Brian doesn't want to use most of the things he's recorded over the last several months and complete the list of songs the record label are expecting", even if at the time, there was a thought that he would eventually return to the material after clearing the air.

"Not destroyed, but scrapped. For what Wilson seals in a can and destroys is scrapped."  Doesn't sound much like he thought he'd be going back to it any time.

[WillJC]

Derek... worked for their Beach Boys as their publicist? Are you seriously contending that there's any possibility it didn't run through Brian, or that someone else passed the word to Derek who didn't communicate with Brian at all before writing and publishing it?

If Derek was their publicist, and had all this information about the tour, the musicians, even the airplane, then why were the Beach Boys seemingly unaware the album had been "scrapped" when interviewed shortly *after* this piece was published? Read the comment from Bruce especially, but also Mike and Dennis too, they're talking as if the album is still being worked on and will come out. That's odd considering their publicist probably would have told them at some point, right?

"If Derek was their publicist"? He... was? He was that? Yes?

It's not exactly a gigantic semantic leap from "scrapped" to "Brian doesn't want to use most of the things he's recorded over the last several months and complete the list of songs the record label are expecting", even if at the time, there was a thought that he would eventually return to the material after clearing the air.

"Not destroyed, but scrapped. For what Wilson seals in a can and destroys is scrapped."  Doesn't sound much like he thought he'd be going back to it any time.

True. For all the Engemann memo was circulating with that discussion about using the sleeves and booklets, I don't think Brian ever expressed a serious interest in returning to Smile. Others would occasionally bring it up under the assumption that they'd eventually go back to it (including Bruce in early '68 who said they had half an album in the can) but Brian made an intriguing comment that year about a big group argument over his decision to not use those songs.

[Galaxy Liz]

There's nothing evidentially tying the May Love to Say Da Da sessions to Smile. If anything, Brian doing that strongly supports that the album he was supposed to deliver had been put on the shelf - these are a run of sessions for new music not among the 12 song titles printed on the back sleeves for the first time since fall '66, besides You're Welcome and the embryonic December Da Da (neither of which were done on the books with a master number assignment). Yes, it's not really a production departure yet - but so? Taylor's piece had been published, obviously at Brian's behest, and here's Brian working on new material outside of the album he'd promised to deliver. In any case, something wasn't clicking with him, as he cancelled a session and never used the track.

When the Beach Boys returned from Europe they started working on more new material (You're With Me Tonight and Cool Cool Water, both of which were potentially B-sides for Vegetables), but they're at Western, there's a harpsichord, there's a session bassist, and the production approach isn't practically any different to most of those sessions throughout the Smile era for Wonderful, He Gives Speeches, Surf's Up, You're Welcome, all the Heroes and Vegetables sections, parts of Do You Like Worms, Wind Chimes, etc. The only thing that sets Da Da apart is it was the last ensemble Wrecking Crew track recorded at Gold Star, but those were already few and far between as '66 moved into '67. Then Brian finally gets the home studio that he’s been asking after and has a wind of inspiration to return to Heroes and Villains as the single following a rewrite, so they spend a few days finishing that off at the house and it’s… basically the same thing? He’s in a new place and has a new organ, sure, but the actual arrangement and production style doesn’t differ in any meaningful way to what he’d been doing with Heroes at Columbia months earlier. On the heels of that, the environment and available instrumentation inspires a new arrangement of Vegetables – and in my mind that’s when a new sound clicks and Smiley Smile is conceptually born. Brian had been sliding towards that type of organic-feeling minimalism for a long time. The transition up to then is natural and traceable and obvious. It’s just a kick up to the next level, really – he jumped into a new bag and got excited by it, to put it in Brian lingo.

I think to say that there’s any one single creative leap from Smile to Smiley Smile and that it can be pegged to Love to Say Da Da is an extremely reductive way to look at it all. But on a practical level, as in, “the next Beach Boys album won’t be Smile,” it’s the Taylor article.

For posterity, here’s that whole thing, Disk & Music Echo, 6th May 1967:

BEACH BOYS fly in for a hot tour - and this is why there’s no new single to launch it...

BEACH BOYS WEEK IN BRITAIN! Out of a sleek, silver jet at London Airport come Igor Horoshevsky, Frank St Peters, Jim Carther and Richard Thompson - plus the five better-known Beach Boys…
    Who, then, are Igor and Co.? A fair question. Igor is up there in huge letters on the side of the Beach Boys’ aircraft. “The Beach Boys and Igor,” says the sign, without explanation or apology.
    The answer is the fine big band the group promised last time they came to Britain.
    Frank plays saxophone, flute and clarinet; Jim plays flute and sax; Richard dabbles in flugelhorn, harpsichord, flute, organ, saxophone and clarinet.
    And who’s this Horoshevsky cat? He plays cello. And he will steer the band on a path of rich, red music across the nation and set these isles once again vibrating good and strong to the Beach Boys.
It will be fine music this tour. It wasn’t all bad last November, either, when the Beach Boys’ potential new LP “Dumb Angel” was about to become “Smile” far away in the Beverly Hills at Brian Wilson’s piano set grandly in the sandbox in the drawing room.
    So why, people may be asking, has the genius Wilson not offered us a new single since “Good Vibrations?” Where, too, is the album? It’s a long story…
    Last November, as the Beach Boys toured Britain, Wilson had NEARLY completed “Heroes And Villains,” scheduled as their follow-up single.
    The rest of the “Smile” LP songs lay in dry dock, in varying states of completion. And when Carl, Dennis, Al, Mike and Bruce - full of pubs, laden with Portobello Road, wreathed in holiday smiles and British pop-battle honours - inhaled again the sun-sealed smog of their home-Golden State, the final construction work began.
BUT ALAS…
    Brian Wilson began to stare at the glittering ships of tape and as the day of the launch became nearer than a date on the never-never calendar, he gazed at his plans and he turned his mind’s ear inwards and the longer he stared and the more he heard, the clearer it became that he was now in his jet age, building steamships.
    Which couldn’t be right.
    In truth, every beautifully designed, finely-wrought inspirationally-welded piece of music made these last months by Brian and his Beach Boy craftsmen has been SCRAPPED.
    Not destroyed, but scrapped. For what Wilson seals in a can and destroys is scrapped.
    As an average fan of the Beach Boys, I think it is bitterly disappointing. But it isn’t as if one is bereft of the group’s essential spirit - there are 14 albums, many of them incredibly pure and full of life and lovely.
    One is, however, deprived of renewal. It is like waiting for an heir when the pregnancy is total. It has to come. Has to.
    What, then? I don’t know. The Beach Boys don’t know. Brian Wilson, God grant him peace of mind … he doesn’t know.
    He is waiting with his nearest Mike and Al and Bruce and his dearest Carl and Dennis. And if it is difficult for them, it is absolutely unbearable for Brian.
    It has to come. New single, new album.
    Until it does, I trust we can all be patient and enjoy the substance of the Beach Boy family which is still young and new, and continually justifying its place in an exclusive pop hierarchy which has never admitted charlatans or pretenders.
    “THE BEACH BOYS AND IGOR” are flying.
    Switch off the lights, turn on “Pet Sounds,” and you know that there are in the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson some eclectic, elegant, ethereal elements which transcend the transitory Top 30, and which makes nonsense of “now music.”
    The Beach Boys are with you now.
    For now they are yours.
    Enjoy them.
    That is why they came.

I Love to Say Da Da is one of the 2 water element pieces of the The Elements and so IS tied to Smile and is on the list.  It was changed to Cool Cool Water.

As I understand it by the end of 1966 they only had left to do vocals for the Home on the Range section on Cabin Essence, vocals for Do You Like Worms, vocals for Surf's Up and the 2nd movement, Vega-tables and I Love To Say Da Da.  So there was not a lot to actually do so why at the 11th hour would you give the whole thing up?  He was struggling with reworking H&V in 1967 but managed to finish that so that couldn't have been the trigger to 'scrap' the whole album.  Even if he felt like that for 10 minutes and told Derek Taylor when he overcame the problems with H&V and the opportunity to release the album was still open, why didn't he?

[Galaxy Liz]

--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.

Good point, GF. I tend to think that Capitol was again hedging its bets with the band at this point with a Best of vol 2, given that they'd gone so long without a new LP. (Which seems pretty wacky to us today, but they really wanted--and expected--three LPs a year in those days).

"Gettin' Hungry" was only kinda sorta a Beach Boys single; its release was rather perfunctory and was put out as "Brian and Mike." A certain amount of fence-mending and ego-stroking might have been at work there. And Capitol probably figured that it was worth it to do so in order to mark time for an impending LP release that they may have already suspected was going to have some amount of backlash associated with it.

My point was that the turnaround mechanism at Capitol at that time would pretty easily accommodate a month from mastering to in-the-stores. So the decision to do a Best of vol 2 must have been made in May or June, when things were still up in the air regarding exactly what was coming from the band in terms of a new LP. As it turned out, Best of vol 2 was a misfire, only getting up to the 50s on the sales charts.

But here's a question I don't think we've ever discussed previously. Presumably Capitol and the band overruled Brian about putting GV on SMILEY SMILE. If Brian had prevailed, however, you'd have a big hole on Side Two; without GV, the other five tracks amount to about 11 minutes of music. Seems that they would've needed to come up with something else to put on the record--but what would it have been? "Good Time Mama"?!

BTW, thanks to Will for grabbing the Taylor piece--I hadn't seen it in years and its tone confirms some things I remember sensing in it when I first encountered it. It's as paradoxical as anything else that surfaced in the "nether region" period--frankly, it reads like Taylor had downed half a bottle of single malt before he sat down at the typewriter. It confirms the idea that Taylor was channeling the strangeness that was abounding around the project and the band--and, of course, Brian--and was making his own odd call for help as he found himself slipping down the rabbit hole with his clients.

It's almost as if Derek is a go-between for Brian and the band, letting them know that he's open to some parallel prospect for the future--SMiLE "scrapped" as a Beach Boy project, with something else TBD in its place.

And the best guess that I think is available to us is that by doing so, he still hoped to keep most of SMiLE intact as his own project, while moving on to some rapprochement with the band. That explains Engemann's memo.

Only what happened was that the band, faced with Brian's depression in the "fall breaking back to winter" in 68-69, decided that they had no choice but to take away his sovereignty over the SMiLE material. Turning it into a "myth" and an ongoing mystery, a bauble they could use as needed.

The band overruled Brian's decision to put GV on Smiley Smile - it was the first time they ever did that.

Certainly by not allowing any of the Smile recordings to go on Smiley Smile Brian was certainly keeping Smile in the hope of putting it out and probably wanted to include GV.  Perhaps Brian told Derek Taylor about scrapping the album as part of that plan - preserve Smile unchanged for a later release and give the band something else which would get them off his back about their concerns about it.  No wonder he got very depressed later when they started raiding his jewellery box to support themselves when they didn't have the nerve to support him in the first place.

[Galaxy Liz]

Derek... worked for their Beach Boys as their publicist? Are you seriously contending that there's any possibility it didn't run through Brian, or that someone else passed the word to Derek who didn't communicate with Brian at all before writing and publishing it?

If Derek was their publicist, and had all this information about the tour, the musicians, even the airplane, then why were the Beach Boys seemingly unaware the album had been "scrapped" when interviewed shortly *after* this piece was published? Read the comment from Bruce especially, but also Mike and Dennis too, they're talking as if the album is still being worked on and will come out. That's odd considering their publicist probably would have told them at some point, right?

"If Derek was their publicist"? He... was? He was that? Yes?

It's not exactly a gigantic semantic leap from "scrapped" to "Brian doesn't want to use most of the things he's recorded over the last several months and complete the list of songs the record label are expecting", even if at the time, there was a thought that he would eventually return to the material after clearing the air.

"Not destroyed, but scrapped. For what Wilson seals in a can and destroys is scrapped."  Doesn't sound much like he thought he'd be going back to it any time.

True. For all the Engemann memo was circulating with that discussion about using the sleeves and booklets, I don't think Brian ever expressed a serious interest in returning to Smile. Others would occasionally bring it up under the assumption that they'd eventually go back to it (including Bruce in early '68 who said they had half an album in the can) but Brian made an intriguing comment that year about a big group argument over his decision to not use those songs.

The group were involved in litigation with Capitol over royalties so they may not have been sympathetic to Brian attempting to release this under his own name.  The group had had another big group argument in which all of the others in the band thought the music was not right for them (to put it diplomatically).  Brian would need to get around their disapproval.  Was Brian contractually tied to the group or did they just brow beat him to stay as they reportedly did with the Redwood incident which happened in the same year?  Was that incident enough to persuade Brian that any attempt for him to go solo with Smile was impossible? David Anderle was suggesting to Brian at the time that The Beach Boys shouldn't be involved in Smile.  Brian reportedly junked a lot of their vocals and recorded them in his own voice after the arguments - was he just unhappy with their performance or was he producing it for himself.

I expect his response to Bruce was a bit of passive aggressiveness on Brian's part and I can well understand it.  At the time Brian was making the album it wasn't right and suddenly they want to use it.   Brian seems to have wanted to preserve Smile  and not to allow them to use it and seemingly they argued about that too.  It could just be to punish them or just that he didn't want it watered down as with Vegetables or it could be that he wanted the opportunity to do what he wanted with it himself.

[Galaxy Liz]

Derek... worked for their Beach Boys as their publicist? Are you seriously contending that there's any possibility it didn't run through Brian, or that someone else passed the word to Derek who didn't communicate with Brian at all before writing and publishing it?

If Derek was their publicist, and had all this information about the tour, the musicians, even the airplane, then why were the Beach Boys seemingly unaware the album had been "scrapped" when interviewed shortly *after* this piece was published? Read the comment from Bruce especially, but also Mike and Dennis too, they're talking as if the album is still being worked on and will come out. That's odd considering their publicist probably would have told them at some point, right?

"If Derek was their publicist"? He... was? He was that? Yes?

It's not exactly a gigantic semantic leap from "scrapped" to "Brian doesn't want to use most of the things he's recorded over the last several months and complete the list of songs the record label are expecting".

Word is they were also working with another publicist for that leg of the tour, I'll get his name when I can. But seriously though, no one told the band that the album had been scrapped after Taylor's article appeared? They talk as if they had no idea, and that Smile would be coming out. Not that it was scrapped, shelved, put in the can, or whatever semantic would fit. 

There are two different Smile albums at play here.  There is the originally planned 12 track Smile with the associated tracks and songs Brian worked on from August 66- March 67.  This is what Derek Taylor is saying has been sealed in a can and "scrapped."  Someone - presumably Brian - informed him that he was abandoning these tracks (but not necessarily the songs, as we see with Smiley).  As has been pointed out, Dada was Brian starting something new, whether for a B side of a single or a track for an album.

Then there is Smile as the name of "the next Beach Boys album" - whatever Brian decided it would consist of.  That's what the Beach Boys are talking about.  An album was continuing to be worked on.  An album would eventually come out.  And to be fair to them, Brian probably wasn't communicating to Mike, Al, Carl et al what he was going to exclude or include on "the next album" from what he had been recording - as it turns out very little was included, only about half of Heroes and the end of Vegetables.

I Love to Say Da Da is the first of the 2 water chants which form a vital part of Smile.  He may have been working on it to use on the reverse of a single and it changed into Cool Cool Water which he also didn't use on Smiley Smile.  I read somewhere that Brian was unhappy that they had put this on Sunflower.  Vegetables was a change from the original also which had VDP lyrics and was called Vega-tables.   It is quite obvious he was trying to protect as much of the original Smile as possible from use.

[myonlysunshine]

There are two different Smile albums at play here.  There is the originally planned 12 track Smile with the associated tracks and songs Brian worked on from August 66- March 67.  This is what Derek Taylor is saying has been sealed in a can and "scrapped."  Someone - presumably Brian - informed him that he was abandoning these tracks (but not necessarily the songs, as we see with Smiley).  As has been pointed out, Dada was Brian starting something new, whether for a B side of a single or a track for an album.

Then there is Smile as the name of "the next Beach Boys album" - whatever Brian decided it would consist of.  That's what the Beach Boys are talking about.  An album was continuing to be worked on.  An album would eventually come out.  And to be fair to them, Brian probably wasn't communicating to Mike, Al, Carl et al what he was going to exclude or include on "the next album" from what he had been recording - as it turns out very little was included, only about half of Heroes and the end of Vegetables.

I Love to Say Da Da is the first of the 2 water chants which form a vital part of Smile.  He may have been working on it to use on the reverse of a single and it changed into Cool Cool Water which he also didn't use on Smiley Smile.  I read somewhere that Brian was unhappy that they had put this on Sunflower.  Vegetables was a change from the original also which had VDP lyrics and was called Vega-tables.   It is quite obvious he was trying to protect as much of the original Smile as possible from use.

I'm enjoying reading this thread, but I want to chime in here on this point even though I rarely post: I Love to Say Da Da was not supposed to be water in the context of Smile, although that is what the track eventually grew into during the period of time being discussed here (i.e., during the time when Smile was transitioning/being reworked into Smiley Smile). According to Stephen Desper, the song was originally about a baby and more likely than not was initially envisioned as part of the 'cycle of life' songs that Wonderful, Child is Father of the Man, and Surf's Up all belonged to. The "wa-wa" 'chant' that you're referring to were baby sounds, and theme of the song being about a baby is referenced in its title and the fact that Brian reportedly sucked on a baby bottle filled with chocolate milk when he was composing it. It was only after Smile that the song's theme changed into being about water. You can read Stephen's comments about how I Love to Say Da Da morphed into Cool, Cool Water here: http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,11964.msg238603.html#msg238603 and here: http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,11964.msg238790.html#msg238790

Given how late in the Smile Session's chronology Brian worked on it, and given how Van Dyke never even wrote lyrics for it, what with the song itself being an outgrowth of a scrapped section of Heroes and Villains (All Day), I am not convinced that Da Da would have appeared on any hypothetical released version of Smile back in early 1967. I definitely wouldn't say that the song was a 'vital part of Smile', and, given its origins, it is also highly improbable that Brian ever had it in mind as part of any elements suite given how the song was originally about a baby. On the thread I just linked to, someone suggested that the transition from the song about a baby to being about water likely happened during this transition period into Smiley Smile after Smile (as it had originally been conceived) had officially been scrapped. I think that view has merit to it — Brian working on the song during this period may have just been him experimenting and fleshing out the song, and that experimentation led to Cool, Cool Water instead. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about Da Da being water and what its overall place/role in Smile was, which I think in large part stems from the fact that the above posts from Stephen were the first time I think that information about the history of the track had been revealed. So I think Bicyclerider's comment about DaDa ultimately being the start of something new for Brian is on point, even though that 'newness' was him experimenting and building upon an older song.

[terrei]

"That the Smile recordings were abandoned the next day does not appear to be reflected in the work the day before. And Smile ‘legend’ would have one believe that these sessions became increasingly weird, and increasingly ‘out of control’. But the recordings show the same Brian Wilson that all the Smile sessions reveal: a composer and a producer in control."

So the accepted history is utter rubbish and probably simply to protect the brand.  And it's funny how the message changed over time from 'it's a nuclear bomb' to 'let's release it' in 2011.

Yeah it's rubbish. The sessions were going just fine circa February 1967. Nothing to see here, folks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oz3FWFn5sk
^ Brian at the top of his game, obviously. You can tell it's the same guy who wrote God Only Knows and Our Prayer.

[Galaxy Liz]

There are two different Smile albums at play here.  There is the originally planned 12 track Smile with the associated tracks and songs Brian worked on from August 66- March 67.  This is what Derek Taylor is saying has been sealed in a can and "scrapped."  Someone - presumably Brian - informed him that he was abandoning these tracks (but not necessarily the songs, as we see with Smiley).  As has been pointed out, Dada was Brian starting something new, whether for a B side of a single or a track for an album.

Then there is Smile as the name of "the next Beach Boys album" - whatever Brian decided it would consist of.  That's what the Beach Boys are talking about.  An album was continuing to be worked on.  An album would eventually come out.  And to be fair to them, Brian probably wasn't communicating to Mike, Al, Carl et al what he was going to exclude or include on "the next album" from what he had been recording - as it turns out very little was included, only about half of Heroes and the end of Vegetables.

I Love to Say Da Da is the first of the 2 water chants which form a vital part of Smile.  He may have been working on it to use on the reverse of a single and it changed into Cool Cool Water which he also didn't use on Smiley Smile.  I read somewhere that Brian was unhappy that they had put this on Sunflower.  Vegetables was a change from the original also which had VDP lyrics and was called Vega-tables.   It is quite obvious he was trying to protect as much of the original Smile as possible from use.

I'm enjoying reading this thread, but I want to chime in here on this point even though I rarely post: I Love to Say Da Da was not supposed to be water in the context of Smile, although that is what the track eventually grew into during the period of time being discussed here (i.e., during the time when Smile was transitioning/being reworked into Smiley Smile). According to Stephen Desper, the song was originally about a baby and more likely than not was initially envisioned as part of the 'cycle of life' songs that Wonderful, Child is Father of the Man, and Surf's Up all belonged to. The "wa-wa" 'chant' that you're referring to were baby sounds, and theme of the song being about a baby is referenced in its title and the fact that Brian reportedly sucked on a baby bottle filled with chocolate milk when he was composing it. It was only after Smile that the song's theme changed into being about water. You can read Stephen's comments about how I Love to Say Da Da morphed into Cool, Cool Water here: http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,11964.msg238603.html#msg238603 and here: http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,11964.msg238790.html#msg238790

Given how late in the Smile Session's chronology Brian worked on it, and given how Van Dyke never even wrote lyrics for it, what with the song itself being an outgrowth of a scrapped section of Heroes and Villains (All Day), I am not convinced that Da Da would have appeared on any hypothetical released version of Smile back in early 1967. I definitely wouldn't say that the song was a 'vital part of Smile', and, given its origins, it is also highly improbable that Brian ever had it in mind as part of any elements suite given how the song was originally about a baby. On the thread I just linked to, someone suggested that the transition from the song about a baby to being about water likely happened during this transition period into Smiley Smile after Smile (as it had originally been conceived) had officially been scrapped. I think that view has merit to it — Brian working on the song during this period may have just been him experimenting and fleshing out the song, and that experimentation led to Cool, Cool Water instead. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about Da Da being water and what its overall place/role in Smile was, which I think in large part stems from the fact that the above posts from Stephen were the first time I think that information about the history of the track had been revealed. So I think Bicyclerider's comment about DaDa ultimately being the start of something new for Brian is on point, even though that 'newness' was him experimenting and building upon an older song.

I apologise.  I misled myself.

I have a partial article. I have been trying to find the rest of it or source it elsewhere but the author’s name is lost and in the morass of information on Smile it is difficult to plough through it all. I believed this article was published before BWPS and it quite clearly explains the lyrics of The Elements to illustrate Brian’s now famed LSD trip in which he died and was reborn. 

It includes quotations from VDP and the lyrics to Da Da are a chant issued as he is reborn in Hawaii.  This obviously makes it an important part of the story and as I also have a track list published long before BWPS which includes “I love to Say Da Da I (Water)” in the same position on the album, I had thought that VDP had written these lyrics earlier.  This, combined with the knowledge that Smiley Smile didn’t begin production until June  and that Brian had refused to use any of the Smile material on Smiley and that he re-recorded Da Da as Cool Cool Water, made it seem obvious to me that Da Da was part of The Elements on Smile. 

I still THINK I’m right but obviously the VDP lyrics for it were written at the time of BWPS. 

The lyrics for Da Da converted from the Hawaiian “convey the idea of a prolonged, intensified ritual based on sacred breathing, with a possible music connection”.  As this is a rebirth I expect the baby like sounds are somewhat fortuitous at worst and possibly deliberate as this is Van Dyke’s style. It is possible that this was always intended - someone else pointed out that VDP leaving was seen to be a big deal at the time which it would only have been if his work was not complete.  Perhaps Da Da was some of the work he hadn’t completed.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

This thread is proof that as famous as the legend is about SMiLE, the hidden truth (which we likely will never know the full story of) is even more fascinating

[SMiLE Brian]

Love this thread, this is like the SS board’s 15 big ones comeback.

[rab2591]

"That the Smile recordings were abandoned the next day does not appear to be reflected in the work the day before. And Smile ‘legend’ would have one believe that these sessions became increasingly weird, and increasingly ‘out of control’. But the recordings show the same Brian Wilson that all the Smile sessions reveal: a composer and a producer in control."

So the accepted history is utter rubbish and probably simply to protect the brand.  And it's funny how the message changed over time from 'it's a nuclear bomb' to 'let's release it' in 2011.

Yeah it's rubbish. The sessions were going just fine circa February 1967. Nothing to see here, folks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oz3FWFn5sk
^ Brian at the top of his game, obviously. You can tell it's the same guy who wrote God Only Knows and Our Prayer.

This is like stating that "'Cassius' Love vs 'Sonny' Wilson" is evidence that Brian wasn't on top of his game in 1964 lol. Is "'Cassius' Love vs 'Sonny' Wilson" a track that people flock to listen to? Nope. But it's a representation of Brian's attempt at making people laugh. Brian was working on a humor album during Smile, right? I'm unclear on this part of the history)? He was big into the Koestler book that stated that laughter is the key to people getting along (paraphrasing). So hence he did some goofball tracks sandwiched in between sessions for Heroes and Vega-Tables...Both of which are powerhouses of creativity (especially the Smile Sessions version on Vega-Tables).

'Teeter Totter Love' is part of a pattern of Brian's humorous creativity that was evident all throughout his 60s recording career.

[SMiLE Brian]

Good point rab, the actual sessions where BW is in control disproved the Mike Love approved “American family” TV movie where BW is singing to a doll at one point and making weird party sessions.