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Author Topic: SMiLE was ready in 1967 - discuss  (Read 37191 times)
guitarfool2002
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« Reply #125 on: July 22, 2022, 03:45:55 PM »

Using the Jasper Dailey track to try to make a point about Brian's work in February '67 just doesn't work. For those who don't know enough about the track or why Brian even recorded Jasper singing as he did, there is plenty already on the record to explain it. But briefly, here's some background and a story to illustrate Brian's humor.

Since Brian and Michael Vosse flew to Michigan in October 1966 to be with the band when they unveiled Good Vibrations live on stage, Brian became an even bigger fan of natural, often unintentional humor, and began wanting to capture it on tape. On the cab ride outside the airport in Michigan, Brian and Vosse had a cab driver whose way of talking and explaining things cracked Brian up. He thought the cabbie was hilarious, and began to roll tape on his portable reel to reel as the guy drove them around the airport. The tape exists in full in the vault. The guy does have a unique way of explaining traffic patterns, and uses the word "Des Plains" in a way I guess Brian found humorous.

At the same time, Brian also started rolling tape on that portable machine at all kinds of places and events, and had Vosse doing similar excursions to record what I guess we'd call now "found audio" or audio verite recordings. Again some survive in the vault, others are lost to time.

Jasper Dailey was a freelance photographer who hung around the LA studios snapping candid shots of the musicians at work, and he got to know a lot of them, including Brian. Most if not all of the candid Smile studio photos were taken by either Jasper, the freelancer, or Guy Webster, who I believe was an "official" photographer for Capitol Records. Jasper had a unique voice, as wse all can hear, and Brian thought it would be good to capture him on tape singing, and actually worked up songs (and arrangements) for him to sing. Again, part of that found humor or unintentional humor vibe he was into at this time.

So that's why the Jasper sessions happened, and why they sound that way. It was part of Brian's humor trip, nothing more or less than that. He was always, it seems during the Smile era, planning a humor album separate from the Smile project itself, which would also feature humor. Brian was also a fan of the put-on (those unfamiliar with the term, look it up) and had been doing put-on comedy since he was a kid. The back cover photo of Smile was a put-on, as was that odd photo of the Boys in a boat in Boston Harbor looking very cold. A total put-on. That's key to understanding more of what he did and why he did it, and not just with Smile.

So here's the story involving the Jasper tapes, I know it's been printed somewhere and I can't recall exactly where I heard it, but I'll paraphrase:

A&M Records was a new label at the time, and was trying to land some high profile clients. They, as other labels were too, were curious to hear what Brian was doing in the studio as there was a lot of mystery and anticipation over this new mind-blowing music he was making in the studios around LA. Somehow a meeting was arranged where A&M was going to try to woo Brian into signing and also hear what he was working on. If A&M, a new player in the game, could land Brian Wilson at this time, it would have been a major coup.

So Brian and Vosse head to the offices of A&M with Brian carrying a tape. The meeting begins in one of the head executive's offices (or it could have been the label head himself, I don't recall). I guess talk came around to what Brian was doing, and what he had to offer. Brian has the tape ready, I guess the exec is excited to hear whatever mind-blowing music he was making with an eye toward releasing it on his label, and they hit play on the tape machine.

It's the tape of Jasper Dailey singing.

The whole thing was a put on.

And that's Brian's humor in a nutshell.  
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« Reply #126 on: July 22, 2022, 04:06:53 PM »

Paul Dano would acted that out beautifully in L&M as a good way to explain the SMiLE era!
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« Reply #127 on: July 22, 2022, 05:10:02 PM »

I’m trying to get caught up so this may have been addressed already..

The whole thing with Derek Taylor’s words, and what the band said later… honestly? If I’m being completely and honestly objective, the whole thing sounds like spin. “It’s not destroyed , it’s scrapped! Cause Brian scraps what he destroys and throws away”. That’s what Taylor was saying if you take out the pretentious flowery talk. What the f*** does that even mean?  Why put out a purposely vague statement like that, full of doublespeak?  

The band not knowing the album was canceled…ehh… one would think it would become patently obvious once some of the songs were re-recorded and released, or were cannibalized to make new songs (Dada -> Cool Cool Water, Wind Chimes-> Can’t Wait Too Long). Just cause it worked once with R(H)onda doesn’t mean it would work again. Logically speaking, there is no way Smile could’ve ever come out once Smiley Smile was released , and certainly not after Wild Honey, regardless of memos. I personally believe all the post -Smiley talk about Smile was using the hype in a desperate attempt to stay relevant.

As for the original question posed in the thread, I have one of my own…

How much of what we’ve heard of Smile was vintage 1966 and 1967 work, and not compiled together after the fact?  I mean, Cabinessence didn’t have a lead recorded til 68. The bootlegs..:weren’t they based on edits made in vain attempts to release it over the years?
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« Reply #128 on: July 22, 2022, 07:13:04 PM »

I’m trying to get caught up so this may have been addressed already..

The whole thing with Derek Taylor’s words, and what the band said later… honestly? If I’m being completely and honestly objective, the whole thing sounds like spin. “It’s not destroyed , it’s scrapped! Cause Brian scraps what he destroys and throws away”. That’s what Taylor was saying if you take out the pretentious flowery talk. What the f*** does that even mean?  Why put out a purposely vague statement like that, full of doublespeak?  

The band not knowing the album was canceled…ehh… one would think it would become patently obvious once some of the songs were re-recorded and released, or were cannibalized to make new songs (Dada -> Cool Cool Water, Wind Chimes-> Can’t Wait Too Long). Just cause it worked once with R(H)onda doesn’t mean it would work again. Logically speaking, there is no way Smile could’ve ever come out once Smiley Smile was released , and certainly not after Wild Honey, regardless of memos. I personally believe all the post -Smiley talk about Smile was using the hype in a desperate attempt to stay relevant.

As for the original question posed in the thread, I have one of my own…

How much of what we’ve heard of Smile was vintage 1966 and 1967 work, and not compiled together after the fact?  I mean, Cabinessence didn’t have a lead recorded til 68. The bootlegs..:weren’t they based on edits made in vain attempts to release it over the years?

As I surmised, Billy, Taylor's words in that article could very well be go-between signaling from Brian, which would explain why it is so convoluted (if we set aside the bottle of scotch while at the typewriter theory). Given what we know about Brian, he might well have wanted to have that information get to the band in a more indirect manner, which would set the stage for a discussion of how to get past the roadblocks stumbling them...

One thing that hasn't been mentioned in this thread is the month away from the studio before the DaDa sessions. That reminds me of a passage in David Leaf's 1985 "codetta" material, when he suggests that the home studio was something the band argued for because Brian wasn't going to the studios anymore. The relevant passage stems from David's initial conversations with Steve Desper, whom he'd been unable to contact in 1977-78 when writing "the Myth":

In my original writing, I ignored the total disruption the studio caused in the Wilson household, and envisioned Brian's home studio as this terrific environment where Brian could be creative. My first mistake was in assuming that Brian even wanted a studio in his home. As Desper explains, in mid-1967, to the Beach Boys, the first obvious sign of there being something "wrong" with Brian was that he had stopped going to the studio. So, as Desper recalls, the Beach Boys brought the studio to Brian, hoping that the proximity of the equipment would stimulate him.

Now this could be somewhat more involved than how it's portrayed here. Since whatever new direction to be taken if the material from SMiLE was going to be "sealed in a can" would need to get underway quickly, and given that the band (as GF has noted) was looking for material they could both participate more directly in producing and be able to play live more easily, the best solution for all those requirements was to build their own studio. Putting it in Brian's house saved the cost of buying/renting a separate building, and it would (hopefully) focus everyone's creativity. And Brian cranked out a lot of material there during that first year--the SMILEY tracks, the WILD HONEY tracks and the FRIENDS sessions (though it's clear they were still doing some work at various studios throughout that period).

Circling back to the point where a decision to put a studio in Bellagio occurs, and looking at the month of production inactivity, it's clear that something had to give right at that moment. A new album from scratch with the band as the musicians, a studio where they could all become more proficient in production--there had to be some type of tradeoff in all that coming back to Brian...and the two things that come to mind are: 1) he gets to continue producing outside acts and (maybe) 2) he gets decision-making control over what happens to the stuff "sealed in a can."

And it looks as though both of those got taken away from him over time. The Redwood incident left him without an outside act to produce, and ultimately forced him to sneak unorthodox material onto the FRIENDS LP ("Busy Doin' Nothing," "Diamond Head," "Transcendental Meditation")--with the result being that the LP had only one single (that missed the Top 40), and the LP was their worst seller by far. That must have set off more alarm bells. Depression and reclusiveness followed in the fall of '68, and the response was to take away any chance that he could work on SMiLE by grabbing two tracks that were closest to being finished and putting them on 20/20--tossed on at the end of Side 2, just to fill out the LP. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment...

(As for the provenance of the SMiLE material, I think Alan Boyd is the man who has the most fingers on that pulse, since he compiled the SMiLE sessions box. There were clearly some compilations made in the late 60s, and early 70s--and I think the research experts can address that, including answering what part of those compilations were included in the materials provided to Byron Priess when he wrote his authorized bio in '79.)
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« Reply #129 on: July 22, 2022, 09:00:03 PM »

So, the whole "Love to Say Da Da is water" thing has been going around for a while, and somehow, despite lots of contrary information being available, it still goes around, so I thought I'd clarify a few things.

This was first assumed way back when, and it would be a reasonable assumption to make if Brian's music-making fit into a cohesive plan over long stretches of time, and if he wasn't going through rewrites and resketches of his ideas every single day. Love to Say Da Da is musically the same as Cool, Cool Water right? And wasn't Brian working on an "Elements" track? So that must've been the water section! It really makes perfect sense on paper. But, things aren't that simple.

The first mention of "The Elements" is in Frank Holmes' artwork, which was done from lyric sheets supplied by Brian and Van at the start of the project. At this point in time, "The Elements" was the title of a song that contained the lyric "my vega-tables." Essentially, it was the title for the song most people refer to as Vega-Tables or Vegetables. However, when the list of songs was written out for Capitol's mockup covers, "Vega-Tables" and "The Elements" were listed as two separate songs. So, "Vega-Tables" had been renamed, and "The Elements" title was now being used for another song. It was probably at this time that Brian had his plans to record a 4 part suite, with each part representing fire, earth, air, and water, as a few friends from the era have recalled.

This idea was first put on tape on November 28 at Gold Star, with the infamous Fire section (slated by Larry Levine as "part 1" of this song called "The Elements"). But even by the time Brian was leaving the session, he'd changed his plans: "Yeah, I'm going to call this 'Mrs. O'Leary's Fire' and I think it might just scare a whole lot of people" (Goodbye Surfing, Hello God). So by the end of that very day, a song titled "The Elements" no longer existed, and thus would not have appeared on Smile. "The Elements" is not a title that shows up on any tapes, Capitol contracts, or AFM sheets again. The 4 part idea was thrown away in favor of a fire-centric song called Mrs. O'Leary's Fire, which comes straight from Brian himself.

A few days later, of course, the building burned down, and even that song got thrown away. "I can do a candle and it's still a fire."

A month after all this, on either December 27 or 28, Brian records Love to Say Da Da for the first time, in 2 sections (The Smile Sessions, disc 4, tracks 8 & 9). It's titled "Da Da" on the tape box, but that is probably just shortened from the full title (the verse of DYLW was spliced onto this reel too, possibly as an intro for this new song, and is just called "Worms"). 5 months after this, from May 16-18, he re-records it, beefing it up from a few keyboards to a full wrecking crew production at Gold Star (The Smile Sessions, disc 4, tracks 10-13). Again, it goes unfinished. 2 and a half weeks later, he re-records it again at Western, now as Cool Cool Water. Also left unfinished. It gets re-recorded in several forms over the next few years, and finally ends up on Sunflower.

So, songs called The Elements and Love to Say Da Da never coexisted. One was written a month after the other was gone. A big misconception about Smile is that Brian was working on the same album continuously over the many months we call the Smile era. But Brian's changing of plans was occurring at a frantic pace. Of course, he had a vision and a plan for everything he recorded - but this plan looked different every day.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2022, 09:01:18 PM by sloopjohnb72 » Logged
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« Reply #130 on: July 23, 2022, 12:26:30 AM »

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.

And I was reading just yesterday of the time he painted his face green to meet the Reprise people described in Carlin's book. From the Arkhonia Wordpress site "Carlin makes a subtle argument throughout Catch A Wave that Brian Wilson made conscious efforts, through the post-Smile years, to sabotage any future career for The Beach Boys – or at the very least to estrange himself from the band; that he could contribute to this meeting for ‘an hour or two’ with his stupid green face while still ‘astute and polite’ suggests a subtle kind of ‘madness’ – a very conscious and self-aware one. This anecdote suggests a tactic at work."
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« Reply #131 on: July 23, 2022, 01:02:36 AM »

I’m trying to get caught up so this may have been addressed already..

The whole thing with Derek Taylor’s words, and what the band said later… honestly? If I’m being completely and honestly objective, the whole thing sounds like spin. “It’s not destroyed , it’s scrapped! Cause Brian scraps what he destroys and throws away”. That’s what Taylor was saying if you take out the pretentious flowery talk. What the f*** does that even mean?  Why put out a purposely vague statement like that, full of doublespeak?  

The band not knowing the album was canceled…ehh… one would think it would become patently obvious once some of the songs were re-recorded and released, or were cannibalized to make new songs (Dada -> Cool Cool Water, Wind Chimes-> Can’t Wait Too Long). Just cause it worked once with R(H)onda doesn’t mean it would work again. Logically speaking, there is no way Smile could’ve ever come out once Smiley Smile was released , and certainly not after Wild Honey, regardless of memos. I personally believe all the post -Smiley talk about Smile was using the hype in a desperate attempt to stay relevant.

As for the original question posed in the thread, I have one of my own…

How much of what we’ve heard of Smile was vintage 1966 and 1967 work, and not compiled together after the fact?  I mean, Cabinessence didn’t have a lead recorded til 68. The bootlegs..:weren’t they based on edits made in vain attempts to release it over the years?

It seemed that Brian told Derek Taylor to issue the press release about the 'scrapping' without telling the rest of the band.  They gave subsequent interviews saying that they were still working on it (Dennis) and the one Guitar Fool quoted by Carl.  My interpretation is that it was a tactic.  They didn't like the material so he takes it away from them but preserves it for himself.  We know from David Anderle that Brian 'junked' a lot of the vocals recorded by the band after disagreements and recorded ALL of the vocals himself.  Where are those recordings?  They say that the bootlegs came from the vinyls cut for the band to take home.  If Brian didn't give them the recordings he'd made of his own voice then the vinyls wouldn't include them.

Cool Cool Water and I Can't Wait Too Long wasn't used on Smiley and I read somewhere that Brian was unhappy with them using Cool Cool Water on Sunflower and Surf's Up on Surf's Up.  Was I Can't Wait Too Long intended for Smile?  But like Cool Cool Water the original version of Vega-tables, and ALL the recordings made for Smile they all remained unused and unreleased.  Isn't that what you'd do if you still had hopes that one day you could release them?  He even went on working on I Can't Wait Too Long.

I agree that all the stuff the band came out with about Smile was just hype - for a time!  Eventually they began to see that the hype can sell records and then that the Smile music sells records.

I had read that only the Barnyard section of Cabin Essence was missing in December 66 and that 7 of the tracks were complete then.  So if vocal tracks were missing likely Brian 'junked' them. I'm sure that many of the boot legs included the later versions of Cabinessence and Surf's Up etc but they may have simply replaced them.
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« Reply #132 on: July 23, 2022, 01:09:58 AM »

Re the discussion about the band not being able to produce the sound for Pet Sounds on stage (and therefore other more complex music such as Smile) - Thanks to WilJC we now know Derek Taylor's press release included the information that The Beach Boys had just arrived in the UK with  'Igor Horoshevsky, Frank St Peters, Jim Carther and Richard Thompson ...
    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.)."  

I also read yesterday that Brian was considering using an orchestra to play with the band.  So whatever the pared down style of Smiley, Wild Honey and Friends was about, it wasn't about reproducing the sound on stage and by extension not releasing Smile was nothing to do with it either.

« Last Edit: July 23, 2022, 04:32:26 AM by Galaxy Liz » Logged
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« Reply #133 on: July 23, 2022, 07:19:38 AM »

Re the discussion about the band not being able to produce the sound for Pet Sounds on stage (and therefore other more complex music such as Smile) - Thanks to WilJC we now know Derek Taylor's press release included the information that The Beach Boys had just arrived in the UK with  'Igor Horoshevsky, Frank St Peters, Jim Carther and Richard Thompson ...
    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.)."  

I also read yesterday that Brian was considering using an orchestra to play with the band.  So whatever the pared down style of Smiley, Wild Honey and Friends was about, it wasn't about reproducing the sound on stage and by extension not releasing Smile was nothing to do with it either.



Consider that even with the extra cost of hiring and traveling with those musicians, and the union rules prevented them from playing in some cases, the band still got hammered in the press for not sounding like their records on that tour. It didn't work.
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« Reply #134 on: July 23, 2022, 07:25:12 AM »

I’m trying to get caught up so this may have been addressed already..

The whole thing with Derek Taylor’s words, and what the band said later… honestly? If I’m being completely and honestly objective, the whole thing sounds like spin. “It’s not destroyed , it’s scrapped! Cause Brian scraps what he destroys and throws away”. That’s what Taylor was saying if you take out the pretentious flowery talk. What the f*** does that even mean?  Why put out a purposely vague statement like that, full of doublespeak?  

The band not knowing the album was canceled…ehh… one would think it would become patently obvious once some of the songs were re-recorded and released, or were cannibalized to make new songs (Dada -> Cool Cool Water, Wind Chimes-> Can’t Wait Too Long). Just cause it worked once with R(H)onda doesn’t mean it would work again. Logically speaking, there is no way Smile could’ve ever come out once Smiley Smile was released , and certainly not after Wild Honey, regardless of memos. I personally believe all the post -Smiley talk about Smile was using the hype in a desperate attempt to stay relevant.

As for the original question posed in the thread, I have one of my own…

How much of what we’ve heard of Smile was vintage 1966 and 1967 work, and not compiled together after the fact?  I mean, Cabinessence didn’t have a lead recorded til 68. The bootlegs..:weren’t they based on edits made in vain attempts to release it over the years?

As I surmised, Billy, Taylor's words in that article could very well be go-between signaling from Brian, which would explain why it is so convoluted (if we set aside the bottle of scotch while at the typewriter theory). Given what we know about Brian, he might well have wanted to have that information get to the band in a more indirect manner, which would set the stage for a discussion of how to get past the roadblocks stumbling them...

One thing that hasn't been mentioned in this thread is the month away from the studio before the DaDa sessions. That reminds me of a passage in David Leaf's 1985 "codetta" material, when he suggests that the home studio was something the band argued for because Brian wasn't going to the studios anymore. The relevant passage stems from David's initial conversations with Steve Desper, whom he'd been unable to contact in 1977-78 when writing "the Myth":

In my original writing, I ignored the total disruption the studio caused in the Wilson household, and envisioned Brian's home studio as this terrific environment where Brian could be creative. My first mistake was in assuming that Brian even wanted a studio in his home. As Desper explains, in mid-1967, to the Beach Boys, the first obvious sign of there being something "wrong" with Brian was that he had stopped going to the studio. So, as Desper recalls, the Beach Boys brought the studio to Brian, hoping that the proximity of the equipment would stimulate him.

Now this could be somewhat more involved than how it's portrayed here. Since whatever new direction to be taken if the material from SMiLE was going to be "sealed in a can" would need to get underway quickly, and given that the band (as GF has noted) was looking for material they could both participate more directly in producing and be able to play live more easily, the best solution for all those requirements was to build their own studio. Putting it in Brian's house saved the cost of buying/renting a separate building, and it would (hopefully) focus everyone's creativity. And Brian cranked out a lot of material there during that first year--the SMILEY tracks, the WILD HONEY tracks and the FRIENDS sessions (though it's clear they were still doing some work at various studios throughout that period).

Circling back to the point where a decision to put a studio in Bellagio occurs, and looking at the month of production inactivity, it's clear that something had to give right at that moment. A new album from scratch with the band as the musicians, a studio where they could all become more proficient in production--there had to be some type of tradeoff in all that coming back to Brian...and the two things that come to mind are: 1) he gets to continue producing outside acts and (maybe) 2) he gets decision-making control over what happens to the stuff "sealed in a can."

And it looks as though both of those got taken away from him over time. The Redwood incident left him without an outside act to produce, and ultimately forced him to sneak unorthodox material onto the FRIENDS LP ("Busy Doin' Nothing," "Diamond Head," "Transcendental Meditation")--with the result being that the LP had only one single (that missed the Top 40), and the LP was their worst seller by far. That must have set off more alarm bells. Depression and reclusiveness followed in the fall of '68, and the response was to take away any chance that he could work on SMiLE by grabbing two tracks that were closest to being finished and putting them on 20/20--tossed on at the end of Side 2, just to fill out the LP. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment...

(As for the provenance of the SMiLE material, I think Alan Boyd is the man who has the most fingers on that pulse, since he compiled the SMiLE sessions box. There were clearly some compilations made in the late 60s, and early 70s--and I think the research experts can address that, including answering what part of those compilations were included in the materials provided to Byron Priess when he wrote his authorized bio in '79.)

Don, you mention an excellent point worth noting. Did Brian even want a studio in his home, did his wife want a studio in his home, and after their first daughter was born, how did that change the dynamic even further?

It's a point that I've rarely seen mentioned or discussed, but one absolutely worth looking at beyond Smile. If the band and the recording process was something that had been causing issues and even stress for Brian, at least he had an "out" where he could go home and get away from the studios. The old concept of not bringing your work problems home with you. But now, like it or not, the work was in his new home (they had literally just moved in that Spring of '67) all the time.

Interesting aspect of all this to consider.
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« Reply #135 on: July 23, 2022, 07:31:23 AM »

So, the whole "Love to Say Da Da is water" thing has been going around for a while, and somehow, despite lots of contrary information being available, it still goes around, so I thought I'd clarify a few things.

This was first assumed way back when, and it would be a reasonable assumption to make if Brian's music-making fit into a cohesive plan over long stretches of time, and if he wasn't going through rewrites and resketches of his ideas every single day. Love to Say Da Da is musically the same as Cool, Cool Water right? And wasn't Brian working on an "Elements" track? So that must've been the water section! It really makes perfect sense on paper. But, things aren't that simple.

The first mention of "The Elements" is in Frank Holmes' artwork, which was done from lyric sheets supplied by Brian and Van at the start of the project. At this point in time, "The Elements" was the title of a song that contained the lyric "my vega-tables." Essentially, it was the title for the song most people refer to as Vega-Tables or Vegetables. However, when the list of songs was written out for Capitol's mockup covers, "Vega-Tables" and "The Elements" were listed as two separate songs. So, "Vega-Tables" had been renamed, and "The Elements" title was now being used for another song. It was probably at this time that Brian had his plans to record a 4 part suite, with each part representing fire, earth, air, and water, as a few friends from the era have recalled.

This idea was first put on tape on November 28 at Gold Star, with the infamous Fire section (slated by Larry Levine as "part 1" of this song called "The Elements"). But even by the time Brian was leaving the session, he'd changed his plans: "Yeah, I'm going to call this 'Mrs. O'Leary's Fire' and I think it might just scare a whole lot of people" (Goodbye Surfing, Hello God). So by the end of that very day, a song titled "The Elements" no longer existed, and thus would not have appeared on Smile. "The Elements" is not a title that shows up on any tapes, Capitol contracts, or AFM sheets again. The 4 part idea was thrown away in favor of a fire-centric song called Mrs. O'Leary's Fire, which comes straight from Brian himself.

A few days later, of course, the building burned down, and even that song got thrown away. "I can do a candle and it's still a fire."

A month after all this, on either December 27 or 28, Brian records Love to Say Da Da for the first time, in 2 sections (The Smile Sessions, disc 4, tracks 8 & 9). It's titled "Da Da" on the tape box, but that is probably just shortened from the full title (the verse of DYLW was spliced onto this reel too, possibly as an intro for this new song, and is just called "Worms"). 5 months after this, from May 16-18, he re-records it, beefing it up from a few keyboards to a full wrecking crew production at Gold Star (The Smile Sessions, disc 4, tracks 10-13). Again, it goes unfinished. 2 and a half weeks later, he re-records it again at Western, now as Cool Cool Water. Also left unfinished. It gets re-recorded in several forms over the next few years, and finally ends up on Sunflower.

So, songs called The Elements and Love to Say Da Da never coexisted. One was written a month after the other was gone. A big misconception about Smile is that Brian was working on the same album continuously over the many months we call the Smile era. But Brian's changing of plans was occurring at a frantic pace. Of course, he had a vision and a plan for everything he recorded - but this plan looked different every day.

It may be more a case of "DaDa" in all it's incarnations not being a part of Smile, moreso than whether it was an element or not. Some suggestions were made earlier that Dada was not a part of Smile and was something new Brian was doing in May '67 at those last sessions before the band returned from the tour, and the lineage of that music (and the musical ideas) had been a part of Smile for months by the time Brian held those May sessions.

Separate issue and just curious on the opinions, but does the track's placement on the BWPS Smile with Van Dyke's lyrics hold any weight in assumptions about the track's original possibilities in the original Smile plans?
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« Reply #136 on: July 23, 2022, 08:32:31 AM »

Separate issue and just curious on the opinions, but does the track's placement on the BWPS Smile with Van Dyke's lyrics hold any weight in assumptions about the track's original possibilities in the original Smile plans?

My controversial opinion:

1) Smile (like any album ever made) was a constantly evolving and metamorphosing set of ideas. Those ideas are not set in stone until the artist decides to officially share those ideas with the world in the form of a finished album.

2) In 1966/1967 those early Smile ideas were molded by both Brian and the people that surrounded him. Brian of course being the one with the final say, but he was not a sole person in a vacuum - he was surrounded by artists, musicians, creatives who helped mold his ideas about the album.

3) post-1967, decades pass and during which Smile fragments leak. Theories about Smile’s track listing, demise, overall themes, etc are created.

4) those decades worth of fan-theories have an obvious impact on the track listing for BWPS. Some fans claim that Darian’s fan-theory involvement ruined the possibility of BWPS being more of a faithful rendering of a 1967 Smile.

But there was no 1967 Smile. The faithful rendering of Smile is BWPS. BWPS is the Smile that Brian Wilson completed and sent out into the world. It doesn’t matter that BWPS uses fan theories that probably “incorrectly” use Dada as a water element. Brian released the idea to the world that Dada is a water element song - it doesn’t matter who influenced Brian on this, fact is that Brian agreed with it and recorded it into the concept. As I stated in point #2, Brian always had outside influences that helped evolve his ideas for Smile. So whether it’s outside influences in 1966 or 2003, Brian used all those different ideas and it culminated into the release of BWPS.

BWPS is the greatest concept album ever made. Not only because the aura of the initial Smile sessions is vividly infused into each track of the album, but also because it’s resurrection was decades in the making - this isn’t an album that was put together in a 2-month time period. It’s recordings were/are the stuff of legends. It took 37 years for this album to be completed. The huge reason for it’s successful resurrection was due to a guy who was just 4 years old when those original sessions were taking place. And that guy is one of the most genuinely dedicated fans of Brian’s music to ever live (i don’t mean to gush about him, but he does put his heart and soul into everything that revolves around Brian and his music). So who better to help Brian finish his masterpiece?

Anyways, long story short: Dada probably wasn’t originally intended to be a water element, but all ideas evolve. Was Sloop John B originally intended to be on Pet Sounds? Perhaps not, but even if it wasn’t it doesn’t matter - Brian Wilson had the final say in it, and it’s now an official part of Pet Sounds.
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« Reply #137 on: July 23, 2022, 08:44:57 AM »

LTSDD was always a Beach Boys song that would've been on the next Beach Boys album after Pet Sounds at the time it was being worked on.

In late December 1966, who knows if this album would've been called Smile if Brian was forced to put it out then, but it would not have included Do You Like Worms, The Elements, or I'm in Great Shape, as those songs had been chopped up, used in other songs, or scrapped.

In May 1967, we know it would not have been called Smile. But LTSDD was a new Beach Boys recording, possibly something that Brian was doing specifically for Vegetables' B-side, and it would likely have appeared on the album too.

In early June, with the song now called Cool, Cool Water, it would have appeared on the new album. Brian was still working on a single, and that had been the focus for about half a year, but the single would probably be on the new album as well.

When the home studio was set up, there may have been an early attempt at Cool Cool Water, though that much isn't super clear as of yet. But whatever the case, the song was soon abandoned in favor of other material, and it did not end up on Smiley Smile. Brian continued to work on it over the coming years until it found its way onto Sunflower.
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« Reply #138 on: July 23, 2022, 09:44:45 AM »

LTSDD was always a Beach Boys song that would've been on the next Beach Boys album after Pet Sounds at the time it was being worked on.

In late December 1966, who knows if this album would've been called Smile if Brian was forced to put it out then, but it would not have included Do You Like Worms, The Elements, or I'm in Great Shape, as those songs had been chopped up, used in other songs, or scrapped.

In May 1967, we know it would not have been called Smile. But LTSDD was a new Beach Boys recording, possibly something that Brian was doing specifically for Vegetables' B-side, and it would likely have appeared on the album too.

In early June, with the song now called Cool, Cool Water, it would have appeared on the new album. Brian was still working on a single, and that had been the focus for about half a year, but the single would probably be on the new album as well.

When the home studio was set up, there may have been an early attempt at Cool Cool Water, though that much isn't super clear as of yet. But whatever the case, the song was soon abandoned in favor of other material, and it did not end up on Smiley Smile. Brian continued to work on it over the coming years until it found its way onto Sunflower.

Once again I'll ask, how do "we" know it would not have been called Smile?

This is Bruce telling this to writer Keith Altham in the May 27 edition of New Musical Express:

"I've got some tapes at home of the new tracks to be on the "Smile" LP which would blow your mind. All the ideas are new and Brian is coming up with fantastic ideas all the time"

The interview would have happened in the second week of May, 1967. This would have been after the Taylor "scrapped" article appeared in Disc & Music Echo, May 6 edition. It was still called Smile.

And this is the same writer Keith Altham who reported in the April 29 edition of NME on "their next LP Smile", saying "All the 12 tracks for the new album are completed" and "there are plans to release the album on a rush schedule at any moment." The same article then describes Paul McCartney's visit to LA "a few weeks ago" with specific detail on the jam session at Papa John and Michelle Phillips' house, including what instruments were played.

So according to one of the Beach Boys, interviewed on tour after the Taylor article, the album was still called "Smile". According to NME writer Keith Altham, whoever gave him the information on it being complete and ready for a rush release had to be pretty close to a main source to report on what was played at a jam session attended by only a few of rock's elite...

And then Taylor's piece in D&ME literally a week later says it's scrapped. Unbeknownst to the band obviously.

That is what never added up. It still doesn't. And press reports going into June and even July are still citing an LP named "Smile".
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« Reply #139 on: July 23, 2022, 09:58:37 AM »

Maybe the Derek Taylor piece was a deliberate move to try to deflect public focus off them for a while? But then that still doesn't explain the comment from bruce.
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« Reply #140 on: July 23, 2022, 10:14:56 AM »

Maybe the Derek Taylor piece was a deliberate move to try to deflect public focus off them for a while? But then that still doesn't explain the comment from bruce.

That's one of the mysteries indeed, Jay. It doesn't add up.

And I'll add one more piece of info that may put even more perspective on the Bruce quote: Bruce said that during a group interview in their dressing room, speaking to Keith Altham, just before they were to leave for Europe for the rest of the tour. It's easy to peg the date of this group interview: The NME show they reference in the interview was May 7th, they played Manchester May 8, two more gigs in Scotland the 9th and 10th, then they were in Sweden on the 12th. It wasn't a solo Bruce conversation, or a phone-in interview: The entire band was being interviewed in their dressing room.

I have scans of these columns as they appeared in the publications which I can post too just so the context is all there instead of random quotes.
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« Reply #141 on: July 23, 2022, 11:17:58 AM »

I guess the question now is, were the group aware of the Derek Taylor piece at the time Bruce made the comments?
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« Reply #142 on: July 23, 2022, 12:15:11 PM »

I think the band was always trying to put the best face possible on the ongoing situation whenever they are questioned about the "new album" during the spring of '67. By this point, they are seasoned veterans in terms of dealing with/deflecting the press. It's almost certainly that simple. And even if they are in a tussle with Brian over SMiLE, they are not going to voice any of that to the press--that would be like pouring gasoline on an already-existing fire...

Also, we have to be careful about applying the right dates to some of the quotes being referenced. That Bruce quote seems to be in reference to EMI's release of "Then I Kissed Her" as a stopgap single in the UK at the end of April, just as the band is arriving for their tour. Badman dates the quote as occurring on April 29th or 30th, which is a week ahead of Taylor's 5/6 squib.

That was the beginning of some very negative press in the UK, as GF has already noted.

I'm sticking with the theory that Brian used Derek T. as a go-between to signal his willingness to revisit issues that had contributed to an impasse. And that impasse had clearly left Brian dispirited, as his lack of progress in returning to the SMiLE tracks from late '66 during the band's absence in April-May demonstrates. He must have been feeling something rather opposite from those lines in the early version of H&V: "at threescore and five I'm very much alive/I still got the jive to survive with the...". Whatever he was doing with "DaDa," it clearly was superseded by the events that took place immediately thereafter, when the band returned, licking their wounds from the European tour and ready to engage in an altered plan of action.

And just as clearly (as GF has noted here a couple of times) Brian was working on the assumption that he could have some kind of "dual track" where he was overseeing a transition of the band into handling more of its own songwriting/production AND he was going to do his own outside productions (Redwood, clearly, and quite possibly some revamped version of the '66 SMiLE tracks).

I think the overarching mystery is what happened to the plans to have a Brother Records 9002/9003 etc. follow SMILEY SMILE, and why WILD HONEY wound up back on Capitol after all the time and trouble to establish Brother Records.
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« Reply #143 on: July 23, 2022, 12:23:10 PM »

I think the band was always trying to put the best face possible on the ongoing situation whenever they are questioned about the "new album" during the spring of '67. By this point, they are seasoned veterans in terms of dealing with/deflecting the press. It's almost certainly that simple. And even if they are in a tussle with Brian over SMiLE, they are not going to voice any of that to the press--that would be like pouring gasoline on an already-existing fire...

Also, we have to be careful about applying the right dates to some of the quotes being referenced. That Bruce quote seems to be in reference to EMI's release of "Then I Kissed Her" as a stopgap single in the UK at the end of April, just as the band is arriving for their tour. Badman dates the quote as occurring on April 29th or 30th, which is a week ahead of Taylor's 5/6 squib.

That was the beginning of some very negative press in the UK, as GF has already noted.

I'm sticking with the theory that Brian used Derek T. as a go-between to signal his willingness to revisit issues that had contributed to an impasse. And that impasse had clearly left Brian dispirited, as his lack of progress in returning to the SMiLE tracks from late '66 during the band's absence in April-May demonstrates. He must have been feeling something rather opposite from those lines in the early version of H&V: "at threescore and five I'm very much alive/I still got the jive to survive with the...". Whatever he was doing with "DaDa," it clearly was superseded by the events that took place immediately thereafter, when the band returned, licking their wounds from the European tour and ready to engage in an altered plan of action.

And just as clearly (as GF has noted here a couple of times) Brian was working on the assumption that he could have some kind of "dual track" where he was overseeing a transition of the band into handling more of its own songwriting/production AND he was going to do his own outside productions (Redwood, clearly, and quite possibly some revamped version of the '66 SMiLE tracks).

I think the overarching mystery is what happened to the plans to have a Brother Records 9002/9003 etc. follow SMILEY SMILE, and why WILD HONEY wound up back on Capitol after all the time and trouble to establish Brother Records.


Don, the Bruce quote dates from the time I outlined above. They were still in the US April 29 and the interview was conducted in their dressing room *after* the NME event happened (May 7). If Badman wrote otherwise, he was wrong:

And I'll add one more piece of info that may put even more perspective on the Bruce quote: Bruce said that during a group interview in their dressing room, speaking to Keith Altham, just before they were to leave for Europe for the rest of the tour. It's easy to peg the date of this group interview: The NME show they reference in the interview was May 7th, they played Manchester May 8, two more gigs in Scotland the 9th and 10th, then they were in Sweden on the 12th. It wasn't a solo Bruce conversation, or a phone-in interview: The entire band was being interviewed in their dressing room.
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« Reply #144 on: July 23, 2022, 12:28:54 PM »

Here's the full scan of the article where the Bruce quote appeared with all the context:

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« Reply #145 on: July 23, 2022, 12:29:33 PM »

As for The Elements being abandoned after Mrs O’Leary’s Cow was finished, I don’t believe that - because the April 67 NME article that states all 12 tracks for Smile are complete - which we of course know NOT to be true - qualifies that statement with Brian saying:  except for one track, The Elements . . . And says something about that track giving him trouble.  Don’t have the quote handy but it’s in LLVS.  So he was still considering the Elements a lot track for the album and it was unfinished meaning it was more than just Fire.  I believe the quote even mentions it as a 4 part suite consisting of earth air fire and water.  

As for Bruce talking about Smile I believe Smile was still considered the name of the next album but what that album was going to include was evolving and Brian wasn’t communicating that to his band mates probably because he was struggling with those decisions himself.
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« Reply #146 on: July 23, 2022, 12:39:47 PM »

It's worth mentioning that Bruce had not been in the studio with Brian Wilson for at least 2 months by May 27. He was getting weirded out by the drugs, and had been distancing himself for a while. He wasn't part of the April Vegetables sessions at all. If he seemed out of touch with what Brian's plans were by then... well, he was! All of the band were, all of the time. Everyone has expressed frustration over the years at Brian's lack of explaining things during this time. Brian's plans were kept in his head, although with all of this documentation and Craig Slowinski's great Smile sessionography being available to us now, it's easier for fans to see the progression of Brian's ideas now in 2022 than it was for the Beach Boys at the time, who were often given arrangements to sing and pig sounds to make without having any idea of how it was going to fit together.

It seems pretty clear that Derek Taylor and Bruce/The Beach Boys/Capitol were using the word Smile to mean 2 very different things. When Derek said the album was scrapped, he was referring to Brian and Van Dyke's original vision as of ~October 1966. Of course, we know this now, and it's obvious that this had been the case for a while. An announcement that the next Beach Boys album would be different than initially promised was inevitable. Like I said, songs like Do You Like Worms were no longer in the running by the end of 1966. All of the work in 1967 until the announcement was purely focused on a single, and the project was on the back burner, while Brian slowly cannibalized many of his songs for the sake of producing a satisfying single.

What Bruce is referring to is the next Beach Boys album. The music that Brian worked on from September 1966 - July 1967 was all planned to be on the next Beach Boys album at the time it was recorded. The music changed significantly, but it was a gradual change. The Smiley Smile title hadn't been thought up by Brian's little cousin (I believe it first appears in a July article, although it was probably thought of earlier), so although the project was not the same as it started, Smile was probably still being used by the group to refer to whatever music Brian was working on at the time.
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« Reply #147 on: July 23, 2022, 12:42:45 PM »


As for Bruce talking about Smile I believe Smile was still considered the name of the next album but what that album was going to include was evolving and Brian wasn’t communicating that to his band mates probably because he was struggling with those decisions himself.

Bingo. Also, if Bruce hadn't even seen the NME article from May 6, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest.
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« Reply #148 on: July 23, 2022, 12:50:09 PM »

Bruce and the entire band were interviewed in the same dressing room for that article, they were all there together! And unless Bruce met Ringo in the US (which obviously didn't happen), the interview took place just as I already laid out the timeline.

Does it make sense if an article appeared in the UK press stating the most anticipated album in the pop world at that time had been "scrapped", that the band would have found out at least about the article? They were surrounded by the UK music press, if such a bombshell were dropped in Disc & Music Echo, they'd ask the band about it!

I find it totally illogical to assume the band would not have found out or were informed by someone/anyone around them that Derek Taylor just announced their new album was reported as "scrapped".
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« Reply #149 on: July 23, 2022, 12:54:38 PM »

Sure, good point, but again, there are 2 things being talked about here, and we're confusing them for the same thing. Brian's original plan for the album had been scrapped. Brian was still working on an album for the Beach Boys, and there wasn't a new title for it yet. These 2 facts are not contradictory.
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