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Author Topic: SMiLE was ready in 1967 - discuss  (Read 37202 times)
Galaxy Liz
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« Reply #250 on: July 24, 2022, 01:46:54 PM »

I like the discussion too; it's fun. I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade, but when misinformation is spread about The Beach Boys' recording career, I feel some responsibility to correct it so that impressionable fans don't get the wrong ideas about the music. This isn't related to what the band said to each other behind closed doors, the fights that occur off the records, etc, etc, because no one can ever know about that for sure. And it is fun as hell to speculate.

But when the theories are founded on information that is just not true, such as the water chant being recorded for LTSDD in May, or the entirety of LTSDD being a section of The Elements, the truth needs to be clarified. If you don't quite understand what I'm saying regarding the documentation and what it shows, that's fine. But if you're continuing to "stick to your own beliefs" when your beliefs have been shown to be founded on misconceptions, and when they are directly contradicted by actual evidence, you are just choosing not to believe facts. Which is fine, but it's not something I like seeing spread about my favorite band, and my favorite era of my favorite band, when there's already so much confusion and misinformation, about admittedly a very confusing album(s) and time period.

This isn't a logical conversation, though, if we're going to ignore actual evidence in favor of objective falsities simply because we like them better. It's not a conversation I wish to continue, as it feels a little bit like trying to explain that the earth isn't flat to some older relatives. I do hope that other people appreciate some of the new found info, and the attempt at narrowing down the truth.

I said Da Da was recorded in May - it was - you concurred.

I asked you for details of the Water section of The Elements - you can't answer.

Well we can definitively say that LTSD is the water section now can't we - though it has been renamed Blue Hawaii.  

I'm irritated at your evading the question and distorting my remarks.  I am irritated with the idea that the whole of history is going to be captured on the tapes or the side of a box.  The crucial questions are not and it is those we are speculating about and drawing conclusions from the pieces and events we know.  You may choose to believe some things and I might not share that belief and you may never be able to provide proof so we will both have to carry on believing our own conclusions.

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Galaxy Liz
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« Reply #251 on: July 24, 2022, 01:54:41 PM »

I count 4 claims in that message that are objectively untrue, as they are contradicted by the documentation that I have access to, and are founded upon absolutely nothing. I can't do this anymore, sorry.

There you go again - what message, what claims what proof?

What do you mean you can't do it any more, you're not 'doing' it now. 

You distort what I say, disagree with published information without providing evidence that it is untrue and avoid pertinent questions I ask and the fact that LTSD is the water section on BWPS renamed as Blue Hawaii.  An inconvenient truth for someone who is trying argue that  LTSD wasn't "Water".  It's possible it might not have always been, but it is now.
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♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇
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« Reply #252 on: July 24, 2022, 01:58:38 PM »

Still getting caught up, but

Quote
I think a main block to mutual understanding in this matter is that there is a tendency to privilege the oral tradition, because it is much more accessible.  But there is a problem with doing history that way -- basically, everybody lies.  Or, more generously, everybody perceives the same events differently.  And there's also the telephone game effect; Brian says something to a journalist, who reports it using different verbiage, and then a book author uses the reporters words 40 years later and puts their own interpretation on that already once-removed context.

Yeah that was my point a few pages back. Remember how long it took before the truth about The Beach Boys playing on their albums to come out? The labor day story? Same with the “Brian stayed in his room for years “. We take for granted how easy it is to fact check these days , but a lot of misconceptions arose due to the lack of fact checking , lazy research, hyperbole, or even outright lies/half truths. Not limited to The Beach Boys either by any means!
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Galaxy Liz
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« Reply #253 on: July 24, 2022, 02:09:18 PM »

Da Da was intended for Smile.  Cool Cool Water wasn’t. 

Vegetables has a title and yet was Earth. 

I’m not asking you what is Da Da - I’m asking what song was Water for The Elements because it seems we don’t have one?    And rather weird that Da Da was reworked into Blue Hawaii - the water sequence for BWPS.

You've made all of that up.  You are assuming that there was at some point a Water element, and Earth Element, and an Air element, because there was a Fire element.  It's a cool idea to have an elements suite.  Brian thought so too for a couple hours before he changed his mind.  But there is no contemporary evidence for the Elements ever getting beyond Fire.  The fact that Darian put together Blue Hawaii in 2004 has no bearing on that.

Vegetables was Earth
Mrs O Leary's was Fire
Wind Chimes Cow was Air
And the track list on paper (so it must be right) dated before BWPS was released says LTSDD is Water.

From another message board "Remember the coda from Holidays has the same melody as the coda for the Smiley Wind Chimes. I flipped when I first heard it, I thought I'd single-handedly discovered the missing Air section only to find out it was common knowledge."
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♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇
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« Reply #254 on: July 24, 2022, 02:18:38 PM »

Wait…I thought Air was never recorded? At least that’s according to Brian himself… “it was a little piano piece that never got recorded “

Vegetables was separate from Earth, at least according to Brian’s memo.

DaDa may be water for BWPS but it wasn’t on the 66-67 sessions. That’s the thing… if we’re talking about it being released in 67 , we can only include what was already there on 67 and not include anything afterwards. Plans change but we can’t retroactively apply things that hadn’t happened at the time

Edit

I hope it doesn’t look like I’m picking sides …I’m 100% neutral on this!
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sloopjohnb72
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« Reply #255 on: July 24, 2022, 02:39:44 PM »

Billy, yes, there's no reason to believe any of Brian's ideas for the "air" element were ever put to tape, and that quote essentially confirms that they never were.

Frank Holmes' artwork confirms that at some point, The Elements was a song that contained the lyric "my vega-tables." Perhaps it was simply the name of the song that would later be called Vega-Tables, or perhaps Vega-Tables was initially planned to be part of some large suite. But by the time the list of tracks was written out, which was written in time for Capitol's art department to deliver the back cover by December 6, "Vega-Tables" and "The Elements" were the names of two separate songs on Smile.

The only recording session, and piece of music, that is referred to as "The Elements" in any form, is the Fire session on November 28. Larry Levine slates it as "part 1" of a song called The Elements, and as everyone knows, it was the section that represented fire. But the final master, according to the AFM contract, was 2:25 long, and as Brian was driving home from the session, he made the decision that he would be calling it "Mrs. O'Leary's Fire." It seems to me that this means that "Mrs. O'Leary's Fire" would have been the title of the song, rather than "The Elements", and that the 4 part idea was out the window. The title "The Elements" was not used again throughout the remainder of the sessions.

I don't doubt that Brian had ideas for water, air, and earth, or that the water ideas eventually found their way into what became Cool, Cool Water, or that the air section was written and planned. But it seems to me that when Brian got spooked by the fires, he became paranoid and left the idea behind. We know that he didn't intend to use the fire section for very long, as that happened soon after the session, but it even seems that the idea had shifted from an Elements song with multiple sections representing different aspects of nature, into a song purely about fire, even on the very day the fire section was started. Brian's comment to the reporter in the car, along with the fact that he edited together a song-length 2:25 take of the recording for further overdubs, suggest that the initial concept for the song had radically changed already.

To insist that "The Elements" must have been made up of other, completely separate songs, is to forget that The Elements was... a Song, on an album with 11 or so other Songs. Vega-Tables was undoubtably connected by some point, but The Elements and Vega-Tables were demonstrably separate entities at another point. Wind Chimes was never connected, existed in a final mono form this entire time, and was also listed separately to The Elements and Vega-Tables on that tracklist. Never connected in any way
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sloopjohnb72
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« Reply #256 on: July 24, 2022, 02:57:54 PM »

Now, to separate my analysis of the recordings from the raw facts themselves, here are some things we know without my personal input as to what it all means:

- The Elements was, at one point, the title of a song that contained the lyric "My vega-tables"
- The Elements was, at another point, listed as 1 of 12 songs to be on Smile, along with other songs called Vega-Tables, Wind Chimes, etc.
- The only recording to be produced with the title "The Elements" was "Part 1" or "Fire", recorded November 28, 1966
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« Reply #257 on: July 24, 2022, 03:27:40 PM »

When was the title Mrs O’Leary’s cow given?
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« Reply #258 on: July 24, 2022, 03:46:36 PM »

When was the title Mrs O’Leary’s cow given?
And while we're at it, when and where did the "Fire" track become known? When it was used on An American Band?
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WillJC
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« Reply #259 on: July 24, 2022, 03:47:54 PM »

When was the title Mrs O’Leary’s cow given?

The earliest use of that title I've seen is the list of Smile tracks Carl gave to Melody Maker in 1972, although I could've missed something else. Brian gave 'Mrs. O'Leary's Fire' offhand on the day of the fire session going by Siegel but I get the impression that the 'Mrs. O'Leary's Cow' title was basically always around from then on.
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sloopjohnb72
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« Reply #260 on: July 24, 2022, 03:49:03 PM »

Well, the title Mrs. O'Leary's Fire was given immediately after the session, according to Goodbye Surfing, Hello God. Here's the fire-relevant section:

It was just another day of greatness at Gold Star Recording Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. In the morning four long-haired kids had knocked out two hours of sound for a record plugger who was trying to curry favor with a disc jockey friend of theirs in San Jose. Nobody knew it at the moment, but out of that two hours there were about three minutes that would hit the top of the charts in a few weeks, and the record plugger, the disc jockey and the kids would all be hailed as geniuses, but geniuses with a very small g.

Now, however, in the very same studio a Genius with a very large capital G was going to produce a hit. There was no doubt it would be a hit because this Genius was Brian Wilson. In four years of recording for Capitol Records, he and his group, the Beach Boys, had made surfing music a national craze, sold 16 million singles and earned gold records for 10 of their 12 albums.

Not only was Brian going to produce a hit, but also, one gathered, he was going to show everybody in the music business exactly where it was at; and where it was at, it seemed, was that Brian Wilson was not merely a Genius—which is to say a steady commercial success—but rather, like Bob Dylan and John Lennon, a GENIUS—which is to say a steady commercial success and hip besides.

Until now, though, there were not too many hip people who would have considered Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys hip, even though he had produced one very hip record, “Good Vibrations,” which had sold more than a million copies, and a super-hip album, Pet Sounds, which didn’t do very well at all—by previous Beach Boys sales standards. Among the hip people he was still on trial, and the question discussed earnestly among the recognized authorities on what is and what is not hip was whether or not Brian Wilson was hip, semi-hip or square.

But walking into the control room with the answers to all questions such as this was Brian Wilson himself, wearing a competition-stripe surfer’s T-shirt, tight white duck pants, pale green bowling shoes and a red plastic fireman’s helmet.

Everybody was wearing identical red plastic toy fireman’s helmets. Brian’s cousin and production assistant, Steve Korthof was wearing one; his wife, Marilyn, and her sister, Diane Rovell—Brian’s secretary—were also wearing them, and so was a once dignified writer from The Saturday Evening Post who had been following Brian around for two months.

Out in the studio, the musicians for the session were unpacking their instruments. In sport shirts and slacks, they looked like insurance salesmen and used-car dealers, except for one blond female percussionist who might have been stamped out by a special machine that supplied plastic mannequin housewives for detergent commercials.

Controlled, a little bored after 20 years or so of nicely paid anonymity, these were the professionals of the popular music business, hired guns who did their jobs expertly and efficiently and then went home to the suburbs. If you wanted swing, they gave you swing. A little movie-track lushness? Fine, here comes movie-track lushness. Now it’s rock and roll? Perfect rock and roll, down the chute.

“Steve,” Brian called out, “where are the rest of those fire hats? I want everybody to wear fire hats. We’ve really got to get into this thing.” Out to the Rolls-Royce went Steve and within a few minutes all of the musicians were wearing fire hats, silly grins beginning to crack their professional dignity.

“All right, let’s go,” said Brian. Then, using a variety of techniques ranging from vocal demonstration to actually playing the instruments, he taught each musician his part. A gigantic fire howled out of the massive studio speakers in a pounding crash of pictorial music that summoned up visions of roaring, windstorm flames, falling timbers, mournful sirens and sweating firemen, building into a peak and crackling off into fading embers as a single drum turned into a collapsing wall and the fire-engine cellos dissolved and disappeared.

“When did he write this?” asked an astonished pop music producer who had wandered into the studio. “This is really fantastic! Man, this is unbelievable! How long has he been working on it?”

“About an hour,” answered one of Brian’s friends.

“I don’t believe it. I just can’t believe what I’m hearing,” said the producer and fell into a stone glazed silence as the fire music began again.

For the next three hours, Brian Wilson recorded and re-recorded, take after take, changing the sound balance, adding echo, experimenting with a sound effects track of a real fire.

“Let me hear that again.” “Drums, I think you’re a little slow in that last part. Let’s get right on it.” “That was really good. Now, one more time, the whole thing.” “All right, let me hear the cellos alone.” “Great. Really great. Now let’s do it!”

With 23 takes on tape and the entire operation responding to his touch like the black knobs on the control board, sweat glistening down his long, reddish hair onto his freckled face, the control room a litter of dead cigarette butts, Chicken Delight boxes, crumpled napkins, Coke bottles and all the accumulated trash of the physical end of the creative process, Brian stood at the board as the four speakers blasted the music into the room.

For the 24th time, the drum crashed and the sound effects crackle faded and stopped.

“Thank you,” said Brian into the control room mic. “Let me hear that back.” Feet shifting, his body still, eyes closed, head moving seal-like to his music, he stood under the speakers and listened. “Let me hear that one more time.” Again the fire roared. “Everybody come out and listen to this,” Brian said to the musicians. They came into the room and listened to what they had made.

“What do you think?” Brian asked.

“It’s incredible, incredible,” whispered one of the musicians, a man in his fifties wearing a Hawaiian shirt and iridescent trousers and pointed black Italian shoes. “Absolutely incredible.”

“Yeah,” said Brian on the way home, an acetate trial copy or “dub” of the tape in his hands, the red plastic fire helmet still on his head. “Yeah, I’m going to call this ‘Mrs. O’Leary’s Fire’ and I think it might just scare a whole lot of people.”

As it turns out, however, Brian Wilson’s magic fire music is not going to scare anybody—because nobody other than the few people who heard it in the studio will ever get to listen to it. A few days after the record was finished, a building across the street from the studio burned down and, according to Brian, there was also an unusually large number of fires in Los Angeles. Afraid that his music might in fact turn out to be magic fire music, Wilson destroyed the master.

“I don’t have to do a big scary fire like that,” he later said. “I can do a candle and it’s still a fire. That would have been a really bad vibration to let out on the world, that Chicago fire. The next one is going to be a candle.”
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BJL
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« Reply #261 on: July 24, 2022, 04:28:29 PM »

Whoa! I go away for a weekend and this thread totally explodes! I'm not gonna lie, this was pretty fun to read through, even if the conversation got a little rough at spots Smiley And I hope no one minds if I jump in with a few thoughts on historiography...it's kind of my thing. Smiley Short essay incoming.....

First, I want to say that anyone who is wondering why Joshilyn Hoisington gets to tell other people they're wrong now and again, and why said people should take said corrections with grace, should spend a couple of hours listening to her work on youtube and recognize that certain kinds of incredibly intensive knowledge production and expertise deserve to be respected. I am not saying that we don't all get to have our own opinions on Smile, but when you're working off of secondary sources, many of which were written a long time ago, and other people in the thread are doing direct, primary-source research and very, very sophisticated musicological analysis, that gives them a certain authority in the conversation that, frankly, should be respected. I am a professional historian who writes about 18th-century America. I absolutely can be, have been, and will be wrong about various aspects of that history, but that doesn't change the fact that I have spent countless hours pouring over handwritten documents from the 18th century, and if someone comes along and tells me that they read a couple books on the American Revolution and that their opinion is just as valid as mine...well... I'm going to nod politely and end the conversation, what else can I say?

That said, although there is some absolutely incredible new-to-me (new-to-everyone?) information in this thread about the timeline of recording, I also think that there is an interpretive question about whether Smiley Smile was a gradual evolution of the Smile music, or whether Smiley Smile represented a profound break. And this is a very interesting question to me--and also why I brought up my day job. Because historians have been fighting for *ever* over whether the American Revolution is fundamentally a story about change, a profound break with what came before, or whether the American Revolution is actually a story of continuity, in which colonial elites used the war to preserve the world they'd already built from changes they believed the British Empire was trying to impose on them. In short, how revolutionary was the Revolution, really? As is often the case, there is some truth to both perspectives. Facts and arguments have been marshaled on both sides. New ways of thinking, new ideas, and new information uncovered from archives historians had not previously looked at can certainly change our perspective on this issue, but at the end of the day, the question seems to have proven absolutely impossible for historians to settle. There always seem to be historians ready to say that the American Revolution was fundamentally about change, and others ready to say it was fundamentally about continuity. It is a profound interpretive question that, unlike many other kinds of questions historians ask, does not seem capable of being solved simply be examining the evidence.

Part of what I see in the thread above is Joshilyn and others presenting very, very important new research and new knowledge--research and knowledge, I want to stress, that I am so, so, so excited to see and hear about and that I appreciate so, so much--and using that new research to support a particular interpretive argument: that the transition from Smile to Smiley Smile was not the profound break we thought it was, that instead that transition was characterized by a certain continuity of musical development, and that viewing that transition in this way provides us with tremendous insight into Brian Wilson's development as a musician in the 1960s.

I largely buy this argument. It is sophisticated and important. *But* Smiley Smile and Smile unquestionably *are* different. They have different titles, different qualities, and were produced under different conditions. And so, to my mind, the question of whether this transitional moment was characterized primarily by continuity, or primarily by a revolutionary change in working methods and aims, is an interpretive question that cannot be settled by evidence alone, and so any assertion that new research *proves* that Smiley Smile was an extension of Smile, and not a break with Smile, needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

I hope I haven't bored you all to tears, and one more time I want to thank everyone participating in good faith in this thread and everyone doing new research on this important moment in musical history! I would also suggest that the best history happens when people look for what is interesting and right in other people's perspectives, not when they go straight for the weakest point (which doesn't mean that factual errors shouldn't be corrected!)


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WillJC
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« Reply #262 on: July 24, 2022, 04:32:14 PM »

Whew... What a whirlwind. I'd like to wheel this back to something fun/informative/interesting and run down the state of each song recorded during the Smile period and where they were left before the home studio, to the best available evidence, which BJL already excellently compiled back in the innocent days of page 1, but I have some amendments and additions to throw into the pool. That should be a relatively harmless way to set a few things on the record straight!

Wind Chimes - Original track recorded and edited August 3, most of a new track recorded October 5, vocals recorded October 10. Brian dubbed the new sections down prior to vocals and assembled the edit on the 4-track reel from August itself, throwing away most of the assembled master from the earlier session in the process (leaving the opening verses intact, using the first chorus, discarding the rest). According to Vosse, this was mixed and considered a tentatively finished product, although that's now missing (as are most of the original 1/4" mixdowns from the era).

Look - Track recorded August 12 (untitled on the AFM/Capitol worksheet but titled 'Look' on the tape box), with a Capitol worksheet indicating a vocal session took place on Oct 13 under the title 'I Ran' utilising the same master number, but no tape of that description has been located. There are discrepancies between the documented titles and known recorded evidence on tape for a few of the October sessions, and a Child is Father of the Man mono mix has the same date, so it's possible that Look might not have actually been worked on that day.

Wonderful - Track for first version recorded Aug 25, transferred to 8-track with group vocals likely overdubbed Oct 4, Brian's lead vocal added and mixed to mono Oct 6, at which time it was considered a finished master. The 'yodellehoo' vocals were added Dec 15 with a Capitol worksheet indicating it was also worked on in some unknown capacity by Brian on Dec 27. Brian scrapped it, recorded a new basic track Jan 5 (probably as a Heroes B-side), overdubbed additional instruments and the "rock with me Henry" vocals with an a capella tag on Jan 9, left it unfinished (wisely?) and recorded a third version in April as a B-side to Vegetables, incorporating a reworked Child is Father of the Man section as a bridge. This didn't get any further than a piano track and some scratch vocals, scrapped again.

He Gives Speeches - Track recorded Aug 25, vocals possibly following at an undated session in September, never touched again.

Holidays - Track recorded Sep 8, never touched again.

Our Prayer - Recorded Sep 19 (BOTH versions - the 'dialogue' early takes in the lower key and the final), mixed and edited Oct 4, with Brian splicing out and throwing away the penultimate section. Brian described it on tape as an unlisted intro to the album during the original session, but in 1969 Vosse recounted Brian's plan to have a 'choral amen' following Surf's Up as the closer, so he might've later changed his mind about where he wanted to use it.

Cabin Essence - Easier to do this one in a list.
Oct 3 - Track recorded (structured in the same form it came out on 20/20, titled 'Home on the Range' on the AFM and Frank Holmes' artwork, but always 'Cabin Essence' on the tape box).
Oct 11 - Transferred to 8-track, chorus and tag backing vocals, first go at the 'iron horse' chant, Mike & Brian's 'crow' lead vocals (yes, it's both of them), rough mixed to mono and edited Verse/Chorus/Tag.
Oct 12 - Revised 'iron horse' vocals, 'grand coulee' vocals, rough mixed to mono and edited Chorus/Tag.
Dec 6 - Unknown, possibly the verse 'doings', maybe more.
Dec 15 - Re-revised 'iron horse' vocals.
Dec 27 - Chorus mixed to mono, with compelling evidence that Brian was stealing it for Heroes and Villains concurrently with Bicycle Rider, which he mixed onto the same reel.
Probably on Dec 28 (by elimination on the timeline), Brian recorded a rearranged version of the music as 'Heroes and Villains Part 3'. This, some muddled comments from Vosse, and Carl's 1972 Smile lineup printed in Melody Maker give a strong impression that Brian was considering a chorus-less Cabin Essence for a stretch after making a sacrifice to the all-consuming Heroes and Villains monster. There was enough cognitive separation for Carl to years later list 'Cabin Essence (incorporating Iron Horse)'.
Lead vocals were probably not recorded until November 1968 for 20/20, although hard evidence hasn't confirmed that.

Child is Father of the Man - First go at a track recorded Oct 7, revised track recorded Oct 11, at which time Brian likely made his full mono track edit. The parts were then individually transferred to 8-track at Columbia, with a vocal session on Oct 12, and a mono mix made on Oct 13 (the supposed 'I Ran' session), edited Bridge/Verse/Chorus. More vocal sessions took place Dec 2 and 6, seemingly to re-record the chorus arrangement from scratch each time. It seems unlikely that lyrics beyond the chorus were actually written in 1966. Van Dyke claimed his only involvement was steering Brian to the Wordsworth poem that originated the phrase, as Brian thought it was something Karl Menninger had written. In April, Brian repurposed the material as a bridge to Wonderful (that's the song dead in the water), then lifted the major key 'whoa child' variant again to Love to Say Da Da, and again to an attempt at Cool Cool Water.

Vega-Tables - Original version recorded in late 1966, possibly at the Oct 17 session with 'I'm in Great Shape' as the title on Capitol documentation. 'Do a Lot' might have been recorded as a tag circa Jan 3, although the tape box notates it 'Heroes and Villains insert Do A Lot'. It is however evident that engineer Jerry Hochman wrote all the titles on the side of that particular box together at a later date than the recording itself, with at least one contradicting the slates Ralph Valentin was calling out, so its Heroes designation might not be accurate. Newly recorded in expanded and revised form as 'Vegetables' for a single in April - Brian completed and mixed all the sections to mono, then didn't edit it together.

Do You Like Worms - Track sections recorded Oct 18, dubbed down to a second generation 4-track and edited together, taken to Columbia for Brian and Carl to add the 'rock rock roll' vocals and an early unison lead on the Hawaiian bridge, after which it was mixed to mono. Group vocals in the Hawaiian bridge were recorded Dec 2 per a contemporary article. Bicycle Rider backing vocals could've been at the same session or later. Transferred to 8-track at Columbia on Dec 21 with the group overdubbing verse backing vocals. On Dec 27, Brian spliced Bicycle Rider right out of the 8-track tape and placed it in the middle of the Heroes verses, after which he added a drum, lead vocals, and mixed it to mono at the same time as the Cabin Essence chorus and Heroes opening verses alternately under the titles 'PORTION OF HEROES AND VILLAINS (BICYCLE RIDERS)' and 'PORTION OF HEROES AND VILLAINS (INDIANS)' - it received extra overdubs on Jan 5 as 'Heroes and Villains Part 2'. Likely at around the same time, a Worms verse was spliced out of the 8-track and placed on the Prayer reel, onto which Brian also recorded the early versions of Da Da, possibly intending to use them together as a new song to salvage the material in the wake of the Heroes massacre. After all, aspects of May's Da Da Part 1 are sort of a reimagining of Worms Part 1.

Heroes and Villains - Finished at least once, nearly finished in many, many forms. Exhausting. The most indecisive serial killer of a song in history.

I'm in Great Shape - There are compelling reasons to think that the twelve-song list including I'm in Great Shape may have been written as early as October before this piece's absorption into Heroes and Villains, rather than after, but either way, on Oct 27 a few track variants were recorded and it was living life as a bridge in Heroes. On Dec 19, Brian recorded a (now lost, save for acetate) new version adapting the Iron Horse cello figure, before it was seemingly replaced by Bicycle Rider and Iron Horse (and swiftly Heroes Part 3) a week later. Brian's vague mention of a 'Barnyard Suite' in four parts to Byron Preiss in the 70s could've been some concept to preserve Great Shape and Barnyard as a track after they were axed from Heroes, but it never ended up happening. The Oct 17 worksheet with 'I'm in Great Shape' as the title and the Nov 29 'Friday Night (I'm in great shape)' AFM contract don't make this any less confusing.

Surf's Up - Track for the first half recorded early November, re-recorded as a whole in a simple piano + doubled vocal form on December 15 (which, weighing everything written and said about it up, was probably not considered a demo). Mysterious session on Jan 23 is lost to time, but a number of things point to it more likely being a remake of the first half than anything else. I'd explain those things if I hadn't already gone on for way too long.

My Only Sunshine - Track recorded Nov 14, vocals recorded Nov 30, mixed to mono and probably considered finished. Then, Brian cribbed Part 2 for Heroes on Feb 10, and recorded a new arrangement on Feb 28, potentially scooping the entire thing away from the land of the living.

The Elements - See John's posts. Although, as a minor correction, the 'My vega-tables - The Elements' illustration by Frank Holmes came out of a discussion over the phone with Van Dyke about what they were trying to achieve conceptually rather than a lyric sheet. Shortly after, Vega-Tables was Vega-Tables, The Elements was The Elements (a self-contained track in four parts), and The Elements wasn't completed. Wind Chimes is Wind Chimes and Love to Say Da Da is Love to Say Da Da.

You're Welcome - Recorded and mixed December 15. And... that's it? Wow, I wish they were all like this.

Love to Say Da Da & Cool Cool Water - See John's posts 2.0.

You're With Me Tonight - First version was recorded at Sound Recorders most likely on June 3, only as a short fragment spawned out of the Vegetables bassline. Second version (fast harpsichord arrangement) recorded June 5 at United as a full-length song. Third version (slow harpsichord arrangement) recorded June 6 and 7 at Western.
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« Reply #263 on: July 24, 2022, 04:41:30 PM »

Whew... What a whirlwind. I'd like to wheel this back to something fun/informative/interesting and run down the state of each song recorded during the Smile period and where they were left before the home studio, to the best available evidence, which BJL already excellently compiled back in the innocent days of page 1, but I have some amendments and additions to throw into the pool. That should be a relatively harmless way to set a few things on the record straight!

Wind Chimes - Original track recorded and edited August 3, most of a new track recorded October 5, vocals recorded October 10. Brian dubbed the new sections down prior to vocals and assembled the edit on the 4-track reel from August itself, throwing away most of the assembled master from the earlier session in the process (leaving the opening verses intact, using the first chorus, discarding the rest). According to Vosse, this was mixed and considered a tentatively finished product, although that's now missing (as are most of the original 1/4" mixdowns from the era).

Look - Track recorded August 12 (untitled on the AFM/Capitol worksheet but titled 'Look' on the tape box), with a Capitol worksheet indicating a vocal session took place on Oct 13 under the title 'I Ran' utilising the same master number, but no tape of that description has been located. There are discrepancies between the documented titles and known recorded evidence on tape for a few of the October sessions, and a Child is Father of the Man mono mix has the same date, so it's possible that Look might not have actually been worked on that day.

Wonderful - Track for first version recorded Aug 25, transferred to 8-track with group vocals likely overdubbed Oct 4, Brian's lead vocal added and mixed to mono Oct 6, at which time it was considered a finished master. The 'yodellehoo' vocals were added Dec 15 with a Capitol worksheet indicating it was also worked on in some unknown capacity by Brian on Dec 27. Brian scrapped it, recorded a new basic track Jan 5 (probably as a Heroes B-side), overdubbed additional instruments and the "rock with me Henry" vocals with an a capella tag on Jan 9, left it unfinished (wisely?) and recorded a third version in April as a B-side to Vegetables, incorporating a reworked Child is Father of the Man section as a bridge. This didn't get any further than a piano track and some scratch vocals, scrapped again.

He Gives Speeches - Track recorded Aug 25, vocals possibly following at an undated session in September, never touched again.

Holidays - Track recorded Sep 8, never touched again.

Our Prayer - Recorded Sep 19 (BOTH versions - the 'dialogue' early takes in the lower key and the final), mixed and edited Oct 4, with Brian splicing out and throwing away the penultimate section. Brian described it on tape as an unlisted intro to the album during the original session, but in 1969 Vosse recounted Brian's plan to have a 'choral amen' following Surf's Up as the closer, so he might've later changed his mind about where he wanted to use it.

Cabin Essence - Easier to do this one in a list.
Oct 3 - Track recorded (structured in the same form it came out on 20/20, titled 'Home on the Range' on the AFM and Frank Holmes' artwork, but always 'Cabin Essence' on the tape box).
Oct 11 - Transferred to 8-track, chorus and tag backing vocals, first go at the 'iron horse' chant, Mike & Brian's 'crow' lead vocals (yes, it's both of them), rough mixed to mono and edited Verse/Chorus/Tag.
Oct 12 - Revised 'iron horse' vocals, 'grand coulee' vocals, rough mixed to mono and edited Chorus/Tag.
Dec 6 - Unknown, possibly the verse 'doings', maybe more.
Dec 15 - Re-revised 'iron horse' vocals.
Dec 27 - Chorus mixed to mono, with compelling evidence that Brian was stealing it for Heroes and Villains concurrently with Bicycle Rider, which he mixed onto the same reel.
Probably on Dec 28 (by elimination on the timeline), Brian recorded a rearranged version of the music as 'Heroes and Villains Part 3'. This, some muddled comments from Vosse, and Carl's 1972 Smile lineup printed in Melody Maker give a strong impression that Brian was considering a chorus-less Cabin Essence for a stretch after making a sacrifice to the all-consuming Heroes and Villains monster. There was enough cognitive separation for Carl to years later list 'Cabin Essence (incorporating Iron Horse)'.
Lead vocals were probably not recorded until November 1968 for 20/20, although hard evidence hasn't confirmed that.

Child is Father of the Man - First go at a track recorded Oct 7, revised track recorded Oct 11, at which time Brian likely made his full mono track edit. The parts were then individually transferred to 8-track at Columbia, with a vocal session on Oct 12, and a mono mix made on Oct 13 (the supposed 'I Ran' session), edited Bridge/Verse/Chorus. More vocal sessions took place Dec 2 and 6, seemingly to re-record the chorus arrangement from scratch each time. It seems unlikely that lyrics beyond the chorus were actually written in 1966. Van Dyke claimed his only involvement was steering Brian to the Wordsworth poem that originated the phrase, as Brian thought it was something Karl Menninger had written. In April, Brian repurposed the material as a bridge to Wonderful (that's the song dead in the water), then lifted the major key 'whoa child' variant again to Love to Say Da Da, and again to an attempt at Cool Cool Water.

Vega-Tables - Original version recorded in late 1966, possibly at the Oct 17 session with 'I'm in Great Shape' as the title on Capitol documentation. 'Do a Lot' might have been recorded as a tag circa Jan 3, although the tape box notates it 'Heroes and Villains insert Do A Lot'. It is however evident that engineer Jerry Hochman wrote all the titles on the side of that particular box together at a later date than the recording itself, with at least one contradicting the slates Ralph Valentin was calling out, so its Heroes designation might not be accurate. Newly recorded in expanded and revised form as 'Vegetables' for a single in April - Brian completed and mixed all the sections to mono, then didn't edit it together.

Do You Like Worms - Track sections recorded Oct 18, dubbed down to a second generation 4-track and edited together, taken to Columbia for Brian and Carl to add the 'rock rock roll' vocals and an early unison lead on the Hawaiian bridge, after which it was mixed to mono. Group vocals in the Hawaiian bridge were recorded Dec 2 per a contemporary article. Bicycle Rider backing vocals could've been at the same session or later. Transferred to 8-track at Columbia on Dec 21 with the group overdubbing verse backing vocals. On Dec 27, Brian spliced Bicycle Rider right out of the 8-track tape and placed it in the middle of the Heroes verses, after which he added a drum, lead vocals, and mixed it to mono at the same time as the Cabin Essence chorus and Heroes opening verses alternately under the titles 'PORTION OF HEROES AND VILLAINS (BICYCLE RIDERS)' and 'PORTION OF HEROES AND VILLAINS (INDIANS)' - it received extra overdubs on Jan 5 as 'Heroes and Villains Part 2'. Likely at around the same time, a Worms verse was spliced out of the 8-track and placed on the Prayer reel, onto which Brian also recorded the early versions of Da Da, possibly intending to use them together as a new song to salvage the material in the wake of the Heroes massacre. After all, aspects of May's Da Da Part 1 are sort of a reimagining of Worms Part 1.

Heroes and Villains - Finished at least once, nearly finished in many, many forms. Exhausting. The most indecisive serial killer of a song in history.

I'm in Great Shape - There are compelling reasons to think that the twelve-song list including I'm in Great Shape may have been written as early as October before this piece's absorption into Heroes and Villains, rather than after, but either way, on Oct 27 a few track variants were recorded and it was living life as a bridge in Heroes. On Dec 19, Brian recorded a (now lost, save for acetate) new version adapting the Iron Horse cello figure, before it was seemingly replaced by Bicycle Rider and Iron Horse (and swiftly Heroes Part 3) a week later. Brian's vague mention of a 'Barnyard Suite' in four parts to Byron Preiss in the 70s could've been some concept to preserve Great Shape and Barnyard as a track after they were axed from Heroes, but it never ended up happening. The Oct 17 worksheet with 'I'm in Great Shape' as the title and the Nov 29 'Friday Night (I'm in great shape)' AFM contract don't make this any less confusing.

Surf's Up - Track for the first half recorded early November, re-recorded as a whole in a simple piano + doubled vocal form on December 15 (which, weighing everything written and said about it up, was probably not considered a demo). Mysterious session on Jan 23 is lost to time, but a number of things point to it more likely being a remake of the first half than anything else. I'd explain those things if I hadn't already gone on for way too long.

My Only Sunshine - Track recorded Nov 14, vocals recorded Nov 30, mixed to mono and probably considered finished. Then, Brian cribbed Part 2 for Heroes on Feb 10, and recorded a new arrangement on Feb 28, potentially scooping the entire thing away from the land of the living.

The Elements - See John's posts. Although, as a minor correction, the 'My vega-tables - The Elements' illustration by Frank Holmes came out of a discussion over the phone with Van Dyke about what they were trying to achieve conceptually rather than a lyric sheet. Shortly after, Vega-Tables was Vega-Tables, The Elements was The Elements (a self-contained track in four parts), and The Elements wasn't completed. Wind Chimes is Wind Chimes and Love to Say Da Da is Love to Say Da Da.

You're Welcome - Recorded and mixed December 15. And... that's it? Wow, I wish they were all like this.

Love to Say Da Da & Cool Cool Water - See John's posts 2.0.

You're With Me Tonight - First version was recorded at Sound Recorders most likely on June 3, only as a short fragment spawned out of the Vegetables bassline. Second version (fast harpsichord arrangement) recorded June 5 at United as a full-length song. Third version (slow harpsichord arrangement) recorded June 6 and 7 at Western.

Thank you ! I’d been wanting this info for years !
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« Reply #264 on: July 24, 2022, 04:45:16 PM »

BJL, you are very kind and I think you for such praise.  I'm really just some so-and-so who has listened to way too much session tape.  And I'm thankful for my collaborators who are better at working out dates and tape statūs than I.  Mwah to you guys.

I'm actually very excited to learn you're an historian of the 18th century -- I don't know if you want to share publicly, but would you mind directing me to some of your work?  I am definitely one of those people who has read a couple (hundred) books about the Colonies and think I know a thing or two but could be put in my place in seconds.  Mainly because I've forgotten too much of what I read -- if you're not in it every day you lose it...

Anyway!  I appreciate this:

Quote
*But* Smiley Smile and Smile unquestionably *are* different. They have different titles, different qualities, and were produced under different conditions. And so, to my mind, the question of whether this transitional moment was characterized primarily by continuity, or primarily by a revolutionary change in working methods and aims, is an interpretive question that cannot be settled by evidence alone, and so any assertion that new research *proves* that Smiley Smile was an extension of Smile, and not a break with Smile, needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

You are not wrong, and it is true that it is folly to try to "prove" that Smiley Smile is, in effect Smile.  We can lay out out the evidence in what I think is a pretty convincing manner, but there is always some room for interpretation involved, absolutely.  There is a spectrum of possibilities between "Smile ended officially on this date and Smiley started on this date" and "Smiley Smile is Smile."

Thank you for that, again, BJL.
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« Reply #265 on: July 24, 2022, 04:50:31 PM »

Whew... What a whirlwind. I'd like to wheel this back to something fun/informative/interesting and run down the state of each song recorded during the Smile period and where they were left before the home studio, to the best available evidence, which BJL already excellently compiled back in the innocent days of page 1, but I have some amendments and additions to throw into the pool. That should be a relatively harmless way to set a few things on the record straight!

God I love this sh*t! It just never gets old for me! Thanks for writing all this out.

Mysterious session on Jan 23 is lost to time, but a number of things point to it more likely being a remake of the first half than anything else. I'd explain those things if I hadn't already gone on for way too long.

Not to ask you to do a ton of work or anything, but I would, personally, be very, very curious to see this explained, if you did want to!
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« Reply #266 on: July 24, 2022, 04:54:17 PM »

Whoa! I go away for a weekend and this thread totally explodes! I'm not gonna lie, this was pretty fun to read through, even if the conversation got a little rough at spots Smiley And I hope no one minds if I jump in with a few thoughts on historiography...it's kind of my thing. Smiley Short essay incoming.....

First, I want to say that anyone who is wondering why Joshilyn Hoisington gets to tell other people they're wrong now and again, and why said people should take said corrections with grace, should spend a couple of hours listening to her work on youtube and recognize that certain kinds of incredibly intensive knowledge production and expertise deserve to be respected. I am not saying that we don't all get to have our own opinions on Smile, but when you're working off of secondary sources, many of which were written a long time ago, and other people in the thread are doing direct, primary-source research and very, very sophisticated musicological analysis, that gives them a certain authority in the conversation that, frankly, should be respected. I am a professional historian who writes about 18th-century America. I absolutely can be, have been, and will be wrong about various aspects of that history, but that doesn't change the fact that I have spent countless hours pouring over handwritten documents from the 18th century, and if someone comes along and tells me that they read a couple books on the American Revolution and that their opinion is just as valid as mine...well... I'm going to nod politely and end the conversation, what else can I say?

That said, although there is some absolutely incredible new-to-me (new-to-everyone?) information in this thread about the timeline of recording, I also think that there is an interpretive question about whether Smiley Smile was a gradual evolution of the Smile music, or whether Smiley Smile represented a profound break. And this is a very interesting question to me--and also why I brought up my day job. Because historians have been fighting for *ever* over whether the American Revolution is fundamentally a story about change, a profound break with what came before, or whether the American Revolution is actually a story of continuity, in which colonial elites used the war to preserve the world they'd already built from changes they believed the British Empire was trying to impose on them. In short, how revolutionary was the Revolution, really? As is often the case, there is some truth to both perspectives. Facts and arguments have been marshaled on both sides. New ways of thinking, new ideas, and new information uncovered from archives historians had not previously looked at can certainly change our perspective on this issue, but at the end of the day, the question seems to have proven absolutely impossible for historians to settle. There always seem to be historians ready to say that the American Revolution was fundamentally about change, and others ready to say it was fundamentally about continuity. It is a profound interpretive question that, unlike many other kinds of questions historians ask, does not seem capable of being solved simply be examining the evidence.

Part of what I see in the thread above is Joshilyn and others presenting very, very important new research and new knowledge--research and knowledge, I want to stress, that I am so, so, so excited to see and hear about and that I appreciate so, so much--and using that new research to support a particular interpretive argument: that the transition from Smile to Smiley Smile was not the profound break we thought it was, that instead that transition was characterized by a certain continuity of musical development, and that viewing that transition in this way provides us with tremendous insight into Brian Wilson's development as a musician in the 1960s.

I largely buy this argument. It is sophisticated and important. *But* Smiley Smile and Smile unquestionably *are* different. They have different titles, different qualities, and were produced under different conditions. And so, to my mind, the question of whether this transitional moment was characterized primarily by continuity, or primarily by a revolutionary change in working methods and aims, is an interpretive question that cannot be settled by evidence alone, and so any assertion that new research *proves* that Smiley Smile was an extension of Smile, and not a break with Smile, needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

I hope I haven't bored you all to tears, and one more time I want to thank everyone participating in good faith in this thread and everyone doing new research on this important moment in musical history! I would also suggest that the best history happens when people look for what is interesting and right in other people's perspectives, not when they go straight for the weakest point (which doesn't mean that factual errors shouldn't be corrected!)


Brilliant post. Worn out after the other post I just made, so I'm short on words, but couldn't agree more with you here. There are few approaching the work of the Beach Boys today as thoughtfully and intelligently as Joshilyn. And I'm very much with you on the Smile to Smiley transition! I personally wouldn't make a claim that they're one in the same. Certainly, at some point, there was a talk about (mostly) recording an album from scratch with a new approach, and it can't have been too long before Brian said, "Gee, this isn't really Smile anymore," and little Barry Turnbull said "Smiley Smile", unknowingly sparking violent confrontations on something called a 'website' with the same title in 55 years' time. The case is more that Brian's musical development can be traced logically from Pet Sounds to Smiley Smile without the shift being quite such an inexplicable or inorganic change in his methods.
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« Reply #267 on: July 24, 2022, 04:55:09 PM »

I'm actually very excited to learn you're an historian of the 18th century -- I don't know if you want to share publicly, but would you mind directing me to some of your work?  I am definitely one of those people who has read a couple (hundred) books about the Colonies and think I know a thing or two but could be put in my place in seconds.  Mainly because I've forgotten too much of what I read -- if you're not in it every day you lose it...

Okay, full confession...I'm at the tail end of my PhD program and not quite published yet Smiley Clearly, I feel entitled to call myself a professional! But you'll have to give me a couple years before I can send you a book!

And re: "if you're not in it every day you lose it", aint that the truth! The things I've known in my life....
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« Reply #268 on: July 24, 2022, 04:57:09 PM »

I'm actually very excited to learn you're an historian of the 18th century -- I don't know if you want to share publicly, but would you mind directing me to some of your work?  I am definitely one of those people who has read a couple (hundred) books about the Colonies and think I know a thing or two but could be put in my place in seconds.  Mainly because I've forgotten too much of what I read -- if you're not in it every day you lose it...

Okay, full confession...I'm at the tail end of my PhD program and not quite published yet Smiley Clearly, I feel entitled to call myself a professional! But you'll have to give me a couple years before I can send you a book!

And re: "if you're not in it every day you lose it", aint that the truth! The things I've known in my life....

You're a professional!  Well, at least tell me what the focus of your research is, then??  Smiley
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« Reply #269 on: July 24, 2022, 05:10:26 PM »

Quote
The case is more that Brian's musical development can be traced organically from Pet Sounds to Smiley Smile without the shift being quite such an inexplicable or inorganic change in his methods.
One myth that has definitely been shattered is the one where Smiley was “just” recorded .,. The methods may have changed but a lot of care did go into the making of it. I think the fact that how much of it was recorded at Brian’s house by The Beach Boys vs in a “professional “ studio gives people the impression that it was slapdash. I think when Brian said over the years that Smile “wasn’t the right kind of music for us “ the manner of recording may have been a good part of what he was actually saying.  So yeah I do think it being able to be played by the rest of the band WAS a big part of it (and the In Concert book has some anecdotes) but it wasn’t due to it being “stripped down “, it was the fact that they were actually playing the parts vs studio musicians. Bluntly put, I think they got tired of being treated like session singers.::or maybe they felt like hired help. Maybe Brian tired of that too, not realizing there would be pushback working for others
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« Reply #270 on: July 24, 2022, 05:12:12 PM »

Whew... What a whirlwind. I'd like to wheel this back to something fun/informative/interesting and run down the state of each song recorded during the Smile period and where they were left before the home studio, to the best available evidence, which BJL already excellently compiled back in the innocent days of page 1, but I have some amendments and additions to throw into the pool. That should be a relatively harmless way to set a few things on the record straight!

God I love this sh*t! It just never gets old for me! Thanks for writing all this out.

Mysterious session on Jan 23 is lost to time, but a number of things point to it more likely being a remake of the first half than anything else. I'd explain those things if I hadn't already gone on for way too long.

Not to ask you to do a ton of work or anything, but I would, personally, be very, very curious to see this explained, if you did want to!

Any time! Alright, I'll happily keep going.

The most obvious suggestion of what those Jan 23 sessions were for are the AFM contracts. The first from 3pm-6pm is titled 'SURF'S UP', and the second (a sweetening session following immediately) from 6.30pm-11.30pm was given the title 'PART ONE'. Considering Brian's working habits at the time of re-doing everything that didn't need to be re-done, and the December 15 piano/vocal recording probably supplanting the November 4 track, that just seems like the most believable thing he'd be doing.

There are some curious things about the personnel that'd support this, too. The first session would in theory be a pretty similar instrumental lineup to the November session - Hal on percussion, Carl and Bill Pitman on guitar/bass, Lyle Ritz on bass, Roy Caton on trumpet, presumably Brian on piano - but really intriguingly, there are three woodwind players. Now, Carl recorded a remake of the 1st Movement track in 1971, mostly mimicking Brian's arrangement from the November track down to the note... but for some reason, he's got three baritone saxes on there, all holding a droning bassline. Where else would he have gotten that musical idea while otherwise rote copying Brian's work on the other track? That, for me, is the strongest suggestion of what they recorded that day. It's only a little thing, but I really can't let go of it.

The sweetening session and missing status of the tape is all pretty fishy. Ten string players are compensated normally, while the AFM sheet indicates a whole horn section and harpist were paid for their services but sent home without being used, which is a total one-off. If Siegel's anecdote about a studio full of violinists being sent home because the vibrations weren't right has a ring of truth, this is the only session that'd remotely fit the bill.
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« Reply #271 on: July 24, 2022, 05:15:03 PM »

Brilliant post. Worn out after the other post I just made, so I'm short on words, but couldn't agree more with you here. There are few approaching the work of the Beach Boys today as thoughtfully and intelligently as Joshilyn. And I'm very much with you on the Smile to Smiley transition! I personally wouldn't make a claim that they're one in the same. Certainly, at some point, there was a talk about (mostly) recording an album from scratch with a new approach, and it can't have been too long before Brian said, "Gee, this isn't really Smile anymore," and little Barry Turnbull said "Smiley Smile", unknowingly sparking violent confrontations on something called a 'website' with the same title in 55 years' time. The case is more that Brian's musical development can be traced logically from Pet Sounds to Smiley Smile without the shift being quite such an inexplicable or inorganic change in his methods.

Thanks for the praise... I was a little worried that post would be all a little too much, so I'm glad people are appreciating it!

Re: Brian's musical development. The honest truth is, there is part of me that has trouble with this argument, that instinctively leans more towards guitarfool's theory that there could have been some kind of big blow-up in 1967 that led to a wholesale rethinking of how Brian was working. With every post the "continuity" folks post that theory is crumbling...but Rome didn't fall in a day, you know?

And I guess part of it is that...in a totally qualitative, just-what-I-hear sense, I've long felt that all of Brian's work in the 60s did not proceed in quite as neat an arc as is sometimes assumed. It has always felt to me - and again, these are feelings, not facts or even theories - that there was a certain kinship between Today and Pet Sounds, and also a certain kinship between Summer Days and Smile. That the backing tracks to California Girls, Help Me Rhonda, and Let Him Run Wild have a certain indefinable relationship with Wind Chimes, Good Vibrations, or Cabinessence, a kinship not quite shared with anything on Pet Sounds, while Pet Sounds built more directly on what Brian was going for on Kiss Me Baby or In the Back of My Mind than anything on Summer Days. And this feeling has led me to think that Brian's story was never so simple as someone evolving forward from record to record, that it was more like someone juggling threads of sound and feel that interested him.

In this light, Smiley Smile seems to me like a dramatic pulling out of what had been a minor thread and turning it into the major thread. Sort of like how there had always been car songs, but Little Deuce Coupe was *all* car songs, Smiley was a whole album of I'm Bugged at My Old Man crossed with And Your Dreams Come True. Where before that particular looser, funnier, less-rock-n-roll approach had been only a small part of what Brian did. Does that make any sense to anyone?
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« Reply #272 on: July 24, 2022, 05:17:45 PM »

You're a professional!  Well, at least tell me what the focus of your research is, then??  Smiley

I work on the colonization of the Hudson Valley in New York, the dispossession of Native people, and the establishment of large estates in that region that had "Lords" and tenant farmers! Which honestly with my user name is probably enough info to find me...but I don't think there's any reason why I need to be perfectly anonymous on a Beach Boys message board (at least, I certainly hope not!)
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« Reply #273 on: July 24, 2022, 05:25:47 PM »

Any time! Alright, I'll happily keep going.

The most obvious suggestion of what those Jan 23 sessions were for are the AFM contracts. The first from 3pm-6pm is titled 'SURF'S UP', and the second (a sweetening session following immediately) from 6.30pm-11.30pm was given the title 'PART ONE'. Considering Brian's working habits at the time of re-doing everything that didn't need to be re-done, and the December 15 piano/vocal recording probably supplanting the November 4 track, that just seems like the most believable thing he'd be doing.

There are some curious things about the personnel that'd support this, too. The first session would in theory be a pretty similar instrumental lineup to the November session - Hal on percussion, Carl and Bill Pitman on guitar/bass, Lyle Ritz on bass, Roy Caton on trumpet, presumably Brian on piano - but really intriguingly, there are three woodwind players. Now, Carl recorded a remake of the 1st Movement track in 1971, mostly mimicking Brian's arrangement from the November track down to the note... but for some reason, he's got three baritone saxes on there, all holding a droning bassline. Where else would he have gotten that musical idea while otherwise rote copying Brian's work on the other track? That, for me, is the strongest suggestion of what they recorded that day. It's only a little thing, but I really can't let go of it.

The sweetening session and missing status of the tape is all pretty fishy. Ten string players are compensated normally, while the AFM sheet indicates a whole horn section and harpist were paid for their services but sent home without being used, which is a total one-off. If Siegel's anecdote about a studio full of violinists being sent home because the vibrations weren't right has a ring of truth, this is the only session that'd remotely fit the bill.

This is really, really interesting, thanks for posting. I totally buy it, at least til better evidence emerges!

And if it is true, it really is just more evidence for what is, for me, an increasingly inescapable conclusion...which is that the Smile project fundamentally fell apart because Brian lost the thread of it. Yea, you can still argue about *why* he lost the thread, how much of it was external factors and how much internal, whatever. But, again, if this is true, for me, there's just no way around the fact that anyone who would re-record Part 1 of Surf's Up has lost the thread of what they're doing. That original recording is one of the greatest things recorded in the 20th century. If you can't tell it's fine as it is....
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« Reply #274 on: July 24, 2022, 05:33:46 PM »

Part of what I see in the thread above is Joshilyn and others presenting very, very important new research and new knowledge--research and knowledge, I want to stress, that I am so, so, so excited to see and hear about and that I appreciate so, so much--and using that new research to support a particular interpretive argument: that the transition from Smile to Smiley Smile was not the profound break we thought it was, that instead that transition was characterized by a certain continuity of musical development, and that viewing that transition in this way provides us with tremendous insight into Brian Wilson's development as a musician in the 1960s.

I largely buy this argument. It is sophisticated and important. *But* Smiley Smile and Smile unquestionably *are* different. They have different titles, different qualities, and were produced under different conditions. And so, to my mind, the question of whether this transitional moment was characterized primarily by continuity, or primarily by a revolutionary change in working methods and aims, is an interpretive question that cannot be settled by evidence alone, and so any assertion that new research *proves* that Smiley Smile was an extension of Smile, and not a break with Smile, needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

That position was superseded by this assertion:

That there was one Smile and that it officially stopped being worked on at a fixed date.  After that date, there was a totally different project started from scratch.

Justification for this assertion has been put forward:

Smiley was started as a new project because the band had to be able to sound like their records onstage.
Smiley involved a totally different method of working
Smiley was less involved musically / had simpler production / had markedly different production techniques

But the historical record does not back any of that up.

The band did not perform any song from Smiley Smile regularly onstage, other than the two most complicated recordings, and never had any intention of doing so.
It was a gradual and subtle shift in working methods from the Pet Sounds style of music and production, easily traceable by looking at personnel, track use, and Brian's roughs.
Smiley was demonstrably not simpler musically, and in fact was in some ways more advanced in it's production techniques that earlier material, despite any perception of unusual simplicity.


Quote
What historical record are you referring to?

Contents of the multitrack and mono tapes
AFM sheets
Capitol Worksheets
Internal documentation
Tape Boxes
The Beach Boys Archives Database

Hearsay is much messier.



Thanks to Will for the Smile track info! And I have to agree with BJL in the post quoted above, specifically "an interpretive question that cannot be settled by evidence alone, and so any assertion that new research *proves* that Smiley Smile was an extension of Smile, and not a break with Smile, needs to be taken with a grain of salt."

That's my issue too. The actual, all encompassing "truth" of all that happened will most likely never be known, discovered, and revealed, and the gathering of information in pursuit of that cannot and should not be limited in these cases to documentation like AFM session sheets and notations written on tape boxes. I think it's fantastic new information is coming out, to help tell more of the story, however Brian was not alone as a producer or songwriter who makes changes to a project as the project as the project is moving forward. Anyone who has ever mixed a project in a studio will know how often things are changed, dozens if not hundreds. What made a great post-chorus hook on Tuesday could sound dreadful on Thursday...however anyone who heard that Tuesday mix will hear what was good at that moment in time.

Tape boxes are not infallible, as Will points out in his post, there are contradictions and outright errors on those boxes. AFM contracts are not infallible, they were simply a method to log a session and who was involved so everyone got paid, and invoices were sent to the record label to make sure the studio got paid, and the funds were taken out of the budget for that project.

I hope the history of Smile is not told through those items in the historical record alone, because to do so would create a situation similar to trying to tell the story of the 8th Air Force, Army Air Corps, in England by leaning heavily on battle maps, daily schedules, and living arrangements of the crews.

My point is, it was disheartening to read the "hearsay" comment in terms of research. Hearsay is he said/she said, not direct accounts from a firsthand participant in whatever is being researched. Do people lie? Of course. But so can documentation be wrong, incomplete, or represent only one facet of a multifaceted issue.

If Carl Wilson said, in October 1967, that the album was finished, we knew decades ago that was not the case. Listening to available tapes was the most obvious way to determine that. But when Carl Wilson, and other Beach Boys, have said a version of Carl's "we started from scratch", that is worth noting. Why is that dismissed as it was in this thread?

Why is any possibility dismissed when you have Brian Wilson, as noted here too, rapidly changing his mind on musical segments and moving things around regularly as he did? On Tuesday something could have been one segment, by Thursday he could decide it sounds wrong and changed his mind. Do we have a log of every time Brian listened to a playback, reference mix dub, or acetate and decided what was what? Of course not.

So the documentation is a terrific tool, it's a welcome tool to gather and release more, but ultimately we're also dealing with *people* here. The story cannot be told solely on the basis of documentation, because just like people can lie, so can documentation be wrong, as Will showed in his post about the tape box notations, and as we've seen in other cases.

There has to be a happy medium.

I'm happy to see that middle ground is showing itself in recent comments. Because for a time it seemed - and I direct this to Joshilyn and "sloopjohnb" as constructive criticism - a narrative or a firmly held opinion was blocking out other areas to consider in the historical record, to the point where direct quotes from firsthand participants were being dismissed, possibilities outside the documentation itself were being dismissed, and anything except the narrative about Smile and Smiley Smile being a direct line with no point of :starting from scratch" was being dismissed.

I hope any future projects about Smile take into consideration all of the various factors surrounding it, and if a project relies on existing and newly-found documentation, those sources are not used to promote a narrative, editorialize, or back up opinions as fact, but instead are shown as part of the timeline free of any narratives or opinions on what the documents actually show.

Let readers and listeners judge for themselves. Ultimately if someone listens to the Smile timeline material, recorded before June 1967, and then listens to the Smiley Smile material, they will be able to form their own opinions about the similarities and differences without being told what or how to think, or that the opinion they have is wrong. If the timeline and documents are used to suggest things that literally no one except those directly involved firsthand could confirm or deny, and promote some opinions over others where both are valid, it becomes an op-ed piece rather than true journalism or historical research.

If there is proof, somewhere in some form, that Smiley Smile was a continuation, a direct line if you will, from Smile with no direct start or end, I'd like to see that, as would everyone else. But there is none, and therefore it's still personal opinion based on what an individual reads and hears. The "facts", as mentioned above, exist somewhere in the middle. But firsthand information from participants should not be dismissed in favor of what someone perceives when they weigh the information available via documentation.

Sage advice I received years ago concerning all things related to music, musicians, and the study of such things: "Above all else, use your ears".
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"All of us have the privilege of making music that helps and heals - to make music that makes people happier, stronger, and kinder. Don't forget: Music is God's voice." - Brian Wilson
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