Here we go, the big one...
Im just gonna go page by page and point out anything in particular that catches my interest. A lot of the most important quotes that get passed around like trading cards to support arguments on here "originate" from LLVS but at this point you've seen me comment on them as they came up in other sources. Also, I've written responses to Vosse's Fusion, Anderle's Crawdaddy, Siegel's Cheetah and Vosse's TeenSet articles before (as "The 4 Gospels of SMiLE") along with Nick Kent's "The Last Beach Boys Movie" so while these are seminal pieces on the band, they won't get a lot of attention in this essay.
1. Look Listen Vibrate SMiLE
On
page 21, the ad that Derek Taylor writes about Brian isn't particularly flattering. He's compared unfavorably to George Martin, more temperamental and hard to be around. The Beatles are said to have stripped each arrangement down to its essentials in comparison to someone like Brian's more Wall of Sound approach. This will be the first in support of another controversial theory of mine--I think Taylor may've been overrated as press agent and arguably did more harm than good. The "Brian is a genius" campaign was a double edged sword, as was inviting so many press people to watch the sessions (though Anderle was equally responsible for bringing his "hip" friends around) and it's clear by the end there wasn't much love lost between Taylor and Brian considering what VDP accused Derek of and what Derek has said of Brian when off the payroll. I think Derek Taylor is an unspoken source of tension in the scene.
Page 29, Dennis says "there'll be things that make people laugh" on SMiLE. Maybe a little obvious but it's a source beyond Brian confirming the point was to get people to laugh at times. You know what I'm going to say about this, I'm sure, but I'll spell it out anyway--I see this as more proof of Psychedelic Sound comedy bit highlights between tracks. Not too many, just maybe 2-3 per side including the Veggie Fight, George Fell & Heroes "you're under arrest/this one's for you, punk!"
On
Page 30, the article "
Meanwhile...What's Brian Doing Back at Base?" is dated mid-November (18th) of 66, I checked with sources outside the book by googling the title. Brian says he's working on the new single, H&V. If we take all this at face value, it means work on the single, or knowledge there must be a single (and according to Anderle, Heroes was selected "because it was the closest to being done") started an entire month earlier than when I'd always assumed. (I checked and Brian had worked on the song last around Oct 27th and before that on the 20th--that's a plausible time when the article would've been written, right?) This piece has a lot of the most important contemporary quotes, "GV, Heroes and ten other tracks" / "lots of humor--some musical and some spoken--there won't be any spoken word tracks but somebody might say something between the verses." If we were to take the best pieces from inside and outside LLVS to make a more concise "contemporary articles collection" for easy reference, I propose this make the cut somewhere in the top 10.
As a general observation so far, I notice a lot is made in these snippets about the group not quite recreating the same sound live "but making up for it with their voices" (or words to that effect). It's a common theme that does illustrate this must surely have weighed on at least some of the BBs minds--between the six of them plus pressman Derek Taylor et al, someone must surely have been reading the trades.
Page 45, Published in October, Brian doesn't consider himself to have written a hymn yet--despite Prayer being done a month earlier. This is probably my favorite individual page/article thus far. He wants to write "a symphony for drums" -- the new Earth element? (Or something else, or just a put-on passing thought to amuse the reporter.) He wants "free form" lyrics so they don't have to worry about rhyme.
Page 50, when listing songs they include "a suite called Elements" but list WC and VT separately. They also misspell Veggies ("Vege-tables") and add a dash to the middle of CE ("Cabin-Essence") so take the word "suite" as you will. The BB are said to have won "more awards than any other American group in the history of pop music" and then lists them--far more than just #1 pop group in NME. (Which itself must have been a great feat since multiple articles so far in the collection focus on that; I repeat, their position on that NME list was worth whole articles in other publications.) Tell me again SMiLE would've flopped. Some people don't seem to understand, sales of a thing isn't solely, or even primarily, driven by its own quality, but by the perceived quality of previous releases and/or media hype. So, even if we accept the (in my opinion, flawed) premise that people in 1967 wouldn't have liked SMiLE, that it was too weird even for acid-induced hippies... it stands to reason the anticipation from
Pet Sounds and these many awards would've been enough to give it a strong initial showing on the charts, and under no realistic circumstances would it have failed to at least crack the top 10. (As PS did even without all this press speculation, industry buzz and Capitol ad campaign--SMiLE had so much more going for it out the starting gate, is what I'm saying.) This talking point needs to die.
The Vosse TeenSet article begins on
page 52 and ends on
page 57. This is undeniably the best account of the SMiLE sessions while they were still going on (his own Fusion article as well as Anderle's Crawdaddy interview and Siegel's GSHG were all written/released 6-to-24 months later, still "vintage" in my book but not strictly speaking "contemporaneous"). Even against those juggernauts of industry journalism, it's probably my #1 favorite article on the subject, for sharing the "little things" that would've been forgotten otherwise, that needed such a recency bias to be included against the grander (and exaggerated) narratives like: "the studio burned down/VDP wrote Heroes on the spot/Dennis' humiliation gave Surf's Up its name" and other postmortem myth-making.
^I love how Vosse describes and therefore legitimizes some of the otherwise "lesser" sessions, providing an invaluable insight into these tragically overlooked moments that I strongly believe were more important than some fans want to give credit for. Like with Taxi Cabber, Brian is said to have directed takes rather than recording the man without his knowledge, indicating an active plan for the track as opposed to "hur hur stoned improv recording because Brian was wacky!" the way a lot of people want to frame it. The Undersea Chant was clearly the start of Water Chant and CCW ("this is an interesting direction. When the guys get back we'll try something similar"), despite any bad faith arguments to the contrary. Vosse describes what sounds like it might be the "dogs chewing on stuff" recording mentioned in Badman or ball and mitt (as Siegel throwing a ball for the dogs). Then we get mentions of Workshop, the Wind Chimes tag (admittedly no vocals are described here, despite what I'd remembered--guess I was wrong on that), plus George Fell and the Veggie Fight. Vosse gives all these anecdotes equal weight as when discussing the Heroes sessions or OMP in a minor key--it's all SMiLE to him, no "this was the real music and hur hur these parts were just Brian stoned and goofing off for a separate humor album!" Brian is described as very happy with GFIHFH and the Nov 4 vocal watery demo--all these wacky asides are presented as valid methods of his creative process, producing equally important pieces for the album. The Veggies game of pool with Hal using celery to hit tomatoes, which I thought the WIBN autobio made up, is in here too. Also, thanks to this article we know the Arab tent was oval shaped.
^Looking at this article again, the one thing that stands out most to me now is a very rare mention of Paul Jay Robbins, where Brian wants to film a "16mm" movie of chickens with tennis shoes at his house for Barnyard--it sounds like Brian imagined Paul would film it, in fact. So is that what PJR was around for? Did he have film experience? Was this ever put to tape, or just another passing thought that Brian quickly forgot about, like the cutlery symphony and all-night telescope store? I imagine it doesn't exist, but wouldn't it be funny if this guy PJR, the quiet Posse member, had filmed this goofy thing for Brian and maybe the tape's been in his family attic all this time but he just never got interviewed, never bothered to make himself known, wasn't popular enough with the other Posse members to get invited to their get-togethers (where things like Williams' book's conversations are recorded and TSS essays written) yet he had an important piece of SMiLE lore all this time? It's doubtful but not impossible that guy at least had stories to tell once upon a time, now lost to history. I wish someone had sought him out back in the day...
The interview on
page 66 is pretty eye-opening if you read between the lines. It feels like there was an undercurrent of Mike overcompensating his importance when a reporter was around, making himself an intrinsic part of the dialogue even if it meant he usurped the reporter's role to ask Brian questions. Also, a nameless engineer interrupts the interview by playing back the tape they'd just cut and Brian yells at him, though Mike tries to smooth over any awkwardness with the actual reporter witnessing such strife. It sounds like it was a weird uncomfortable time and the interviewer did their best to play it off as funny "oh those wacky BBs" but knowing what we know now it feels like a microcosm of Brian and Mike's flaws on display. I may be reading too much into it.
On
page 68 VDP (presumably in a then-contemporary interview with Priore?) describes being fired by Mike Love. On the next page, he emphasizes he worked FOR Brian, not
with: "HE WAS IT." Van has always emphasized that SMiLE was Brian's vision first and foremost, they were not equal collaborators so much as he was subordinate to Brian's artistic inclinations. (Despite some of my theories that he pushed the Americana angle and Anderle's comments implying a more co-producer/arranger relationship.)
On
page 75 Brian says Lets Go Away for Awhile was meant to have vocals originally--so that seems a confirmation. (I was starting to doubt that talking point since Asher denied writing lyrics for it and I began to feel as though the only source was self-referencing hearsay.) This is also the first Ive seen of Brian in a vintage source admitting the group isn't perceived as cool. He plays it off but the fact that he even brings it up shows it must have weighed on him in some way. I think, and it seems a fairly uncontroversial opinion, that SMiLE was Brian deliberately trying to be cool. (Not that this implies insincerity of the material, but he definitely wanted hip approval, hence Derek Taylor and VDP with their Beatles and Byrds cred, plus using Anderle who has been described as the hippest guy in LA with tons of high profile friends.)
The Derek Taylor ad on
pages 76 thru
78 doesn't really impress me either. I think something like Vosse's TeenSet piece feel more like an ad than Taylor's kinda tongue in cheek, sometimes backhanded, sorta meandering prose. I get the distinct impression reading Taylor's articles so far that he thinks he's better than this gig and kind of phoning it in, taking as many little pot-shots as he can get away with. I wouldn't be interested in giving the band a chance just reading his work, while the two Vosse articles and Siegel's make me wish I could sell my soul, just to have been a witness of the awesome scene they describe. The best advertisement for SMiLE now is in the myth that Siegel, Vosse and Anderle's accounts have created.
Reading the Priore article that comes next (
page 99) is just so exhausting. This guy, I guess I probably hate what I see in myself but he'll tease a revelation and then goes off on an aside and seemingly never gets back around to the point. Like in that earcandy interview I posted where he's asked about the secret unrecorded conversation where Brian revealed that his (Priore's) SMiLE mix is somehow exactly was always intended in '66, and rather than just give a direct answer, he feels the need to remind us in 5+ paragraphs about what music was cool in the mid-sixties instead. Here we were supposed to learn the secret that inspired the Americana suite only to be reminded for the millionth time that America wasn't cool in the late '60s because of Vietnam. Or he'll hint at the pictorial secrets of SMiLE only to segue into a rambling paragraph about how sounds can shatter glass, the walls of Jericho and his anecdotal experience at a Pink Floyd concert. This guy, agree with his SMiLE theories or not, needs an editor. (Perhaps I could use one too, I admit I can be rambly, but I'm not selling books nor claiming my mix was blessed with Brian's approval am I?)
^This same Priore article is where he goes into the infamous Americana/Elements structure I've come to be the chief antagonist of. Even putting aside all the other arguments that I've described ad nauseum, I disagree with Priore's "evidence" that the Americana songs are "more lyrical" while the Elements are "more pictorial." I was thinking about this the other day and was trying to find a way to work it into an essay--
even putting aside thematic, lyrical or instrumental considerations, I think there's a clear division in pictoral/bisociative subject matter within SMiLE. What we call the Americana songs (the core being: Heroes/Worms/CE and arguably MOLC) are about putting the listener in a specific place and time in US history. Heroes could be about nothing except life in an old West gunslinger saloon, Worms is about Plymouth to Hawaii and how we overthrow the rightful native societies in each, CE the railroads, Cow the Chicago fire. Without even any lyrics (though they do help) you can feel the locations in the arrangements. Meanwhile the rest (Wonderful/Look/Child/Surf/WC/GV and even VT despite my preference for it as a "Mid-West Breadbasket" Americana track) focus on bringing inanimate objects to life musically. A music box (and the feminine innocence that implies), an ice cream truck (speculative but what else does that track make YOU think of?), a baby crying, jewelry at the opera, chimes, physical attraction around a hot chick and vegetables--the exact location in space and time is irrelevant here, these are common objects one interacts with anywhere. To me, this is another clear separation between the songs, and I'm not reaching in service of a pet theory, because Veggies in the second classification actually goes against my preferred placement for that song with the American Gothic suite. (OMP is also something of an odd one out here and viewing SMiLE through this lens, I think it's a lesser inclusion than something like Look, which I would use to take its place were it up to me. OMP's arrangement is not particularly pictorial except the fade.) It's hard to comment on which is "more lyrical" or packed with allusions since most of the unfinished songs are in the non-Americana group--but Surf's Up has at least two direct literary references which is as much as any other and it along with Wonderful are perhaps the most "dense" oblique lyrics in the whole canon.
^Beyond that, Priore's article is just hype ("the Beatles were trying to capture a moment...Brian was trying to capture a piece of eternity!" Uhh, sure whatever that means, Dom.) I do admire his enthusiasm I just hate his methodology. Say what you will about me or my ideas--I must surely come off as a pompous exhaustively worded petty person and I make no excuses for it--but I've never deliberately lied to push a perspective. Never. That's where I draw the line and I find those who do inexcusable.
Who knows if it's true or not, but
page 130's mini-history gives March 2 as the date VDP leaves, then March 31 as his brief return until April 14.
I love how, on
page 131, most of one of the articles is covered up by two additional snippets overlapping it diagonally. Like, the whole "clipped out scrapbook" presentation is cute--same as the Tobelman site's "1990s Web 1.0...for better and worse" aesthetic, but it's not particularly user-friendly much of the time. I find myself wanting a table of contents, an index, a chronological (or subject based) order...anything to make following along more simple and sensible. Half the type is too small to read, and some articles like this we just don't get to see in full because Domenic the Keeper of the Scrolls didn't feel they were important. (Perhaps they say things he'd rather keep hidden but he wants the credit of including them, I don't know but wouldn't put any dirty tricks passed the guy at this point.) I resent that both of these sources that seemingly defined SMiLE discourse in the early days, are slap-dash, ad-hoc, schizophrenic assemblies--perhaps you could say they work as a performance piece, mimicking the scatter-brained nature of '66-'67 Brian and his fragmentary tapes, but it's a lot less cute when you're trying to suss out real info in a timely fashion. I'm predisposed to dunk on Priore at this point, but I don't think making the articles physically legible is asking too much here--this just provides a perfect excuse to bring up my problems with the book as a whole, revisiting it without the rose-tinted glasses of my earlier fandom.
On a similar note, I dislike the way sheet music for part of Cabin Essence is provided but for no other song. I guess that's all he had access to but it's frustrating to be teased with something I've genuinely wanted to find only to get the rug pulled out. Someone who can determine what notes are played by what instruments would be doing the world a great service if they wrote out sheet music for all the SMiLE "feels." I know BWPS has a sheetmusic book for sale and I've even referenced a certain site that has some in an interactive digital format, but they're far from complete. I'd do it myself at this point, but it's beyond my abilities.
On
page 133, we get some interesting snippets of info--Brian is said to be "worried" about one track in particular, The Elements (here described as "Earth, Air, Fire, Water--coincidentally how it happened on BWPS). Bruce admits he doesn't get the lyrics either, but diplomatically pivots to "it's more concerned with the harmonies."
The next Derek Taylor article is more of the same from him--kinda subtly making fun of the group it seems. I think the guy was put in a bad spot, having to hype up the band with no product to speak of, but if I saw this, with paragraph after paragraph of excuses and "well, there was no official deadline so they can take as long as they want" I know I'd think "hmm...sounds like apologism to me." I really think Vosse and Siegel, whether they meant to or not, had the right idea for advertising this thing by just describing how much fun the sessions could be and how unconventional Brian's methods were. Vosse should've been the press agent--he had a knack for translating his admiration and excitement to good copy. Taylor has a tinge of British condescension and fake enthusiasm that I can smell a mile away. (He describes Bruce as "still kind to his mother" which feels like calling him a momma's boy--that's a backhanded compliment if I ever heard one. You couldn't say ANYTHING else about the guy but that, really?) That said, we do get one nice description of the Posse and their women fooling around in the tent ("...sometimes spray each other with chocolate cream and frosting from aerosol cans,") as well as the planned slide going down to the bed (the mattress, apparently, was to be huge and circular). I recall Vosse saying in Fusion this was determined to be impossible to build in any kind of practical manner, but Taylor here says they lost trust in the builder when he sold them grass seeds with weeds in it. Huh.
Mike talks about the planned future for the band on
page 140 which includes Brian AND Dennis AND Bruce (?!) producing their own records for BRI "Carl does the organizational part and I'm the business guy." Mike claims Brian brought the tapes of H&V to the radio DJs himself. With regard to SMiLE's transition to
Smiley, he says "Brian played the tapes again a few times and found it necessary to skip some songs," no elaboration given on why. This is the kind of detail I wish someone would've brought up to Mike over the years and held his feet to the fire on. When did this happen--pre or post the Taylor announcement, in Spring '67 or even earlier like March? Why did Brian feel this way--was he axing the more VDP-influenced songs, the ones most unfinished and/or with the more "objectionable" lyrics? Was it about trashing the songs that wouldn't sound as good in the stripped down Smiley aesthetic and/or live on stage? I'm really curious but unfortunately the window to get answers on this has long since been closed.
Page 141: We get what appears to be an original lyric sheet for "Teeter Totter Love" but frustratingly, nothing for the two lost Jasper Dailey songs. Those must've been afterthoughts (of the afterthought) even then. It seems like nobody ever cared about them.
Page 144: I had never even thought of it before--call me sexist or small-minded--but yeah, why HASN'T anyone asked Marilyn what SMiLE was back in the day? Well, apparently they did here in this article and she doesn't know anything. Never had any late-night conversations with her husband in bed back when it was going on, never asked him over breakfast throughout the next ten years...or if she did, he wouldn't even tell her. Ah well. My assumption that she was kept out of the creative loop has been justified retroactively I guess.
On
page 145, the author of the essay (Brad Elliot) doesn't/didn't know what he was talking about, saying Worms was finished. I could maybe understand thinking an "instrumental" like I Ran is finished if that's all you heard was boots with no master sessionography or knowledge of the lost vocal tape, but even listening to the boots of Worms, how can a song be half instrumental and half chorus vocals? The BBs weren't
that avant garde, not even in the SMiLE sessions. The rest of his diagnosis is similarly flawed, which I don't hold against him because info was sparse when this was written, but it just goes to show how SMiLE-archeologists back then were working with a very flawed perspective and their conclusions are so outdated and ill-founded they shouldn't keep dominating the rhetoric around this album as they seem to do today. Like, it's kinda cute to look back and say "aww, they thought CIFOTM was a one-minute cut" and "haha, they thought IWBA was a working title for IIGS instead of its own song" (I know Workshop was labelled "Friday Night (IIGS)" though that's not the same thing,) but this has no use as a source for what SMiLE or its tracks were going to be now, in 2025. (This document is even older to us than the SMiLE recording dates to it when first written!)
In my recent thread about SMiLE sessions not included in the boxset
http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,28662.0.html we were told the 11-8 date for SU was "a mistake in Capitol's files" but here on
page 153 of the book I'm looking at a session worksheet with that date, 2:20 track time, "1st movement" from 2pm to 5pm, overtime till 6pm, with Chuck Britz and Diane Rovell's signatures on it. So now I'm skeptical of that claim. And this is presumably where the speculation for a second movement derives from, I suppose (I'd heard it was because one session was labelled "first movement" implying a second). If this was a mistake it was a helluva mistake that's caused a lot of people a lot of headache, is all I'm saying. If there really was a session here it's another missing piece.
On
page 154, this is the first I've seen where Steven Desper recorded water sounds instead of (or in addition to?) Michael Vosse. Same page, I really wish we could hear the Oct 2:25 minute Heroes and Villains. I wonder if it wouldn't have just been a nice little cowboy song that's tight and perfectly fine and should've just been left alone so that all the work trying to make it the next GV could've been better spent on literally anything else.
Page 155, more nonsense about Tones and Holidays being related, hence the final Tones session might've been for The Elements...Veggies first session was April 4 (uhh, the Oct demo says hi), McCartney played bass at a Veggie session, etc. I'd like to see a new collection of sources that culls these useless outdated sources, which now only serve to justify false info, and make a tighter scrapbook of only the high level articles which give the truth.
I wish we had a complete, ORGANIZED list of the session work sheets anywhere. I always see a few posted here and there in the various books like this one and TSS but it's always very haphazard which are included and in what order. I want a companion piece to AGD's (and WillJC's when it's done) complete sessionography where every individual session is accompanied by one of these worksheets, pictures of the tape box, and a link/reference to the music contained therein (IE, "what was recorded on this day can be found on TSS Disc 3 track 12 as well as a longer take on these boots..."). Something like that would be of far more interest to me nowadays than these annoying essays of Priore and pals telling us when they first heard SMiLE or speculating on how complete the tracks are and getting a bunch of stuff wrong. I can't speak for others but I'm just done with the myth-making, the fan circle-jerking and baseless speculation ("SMiLE is Brian's second acid trip!")--I just want the bare facts but it's so hard to get them even today. Everything is buried in a "too cute" presentation and conjecture-laden prose that was part of the charm back in the day but now feels an impediment to real scholarship.
"
The Frenzied Frontier of Pop Music" by Tom Nolan is another particularly great article that isn't frequently talked about in our circles. There's a lot of good quotes, a fly on the wall account of a typical SMiLE session, plus comparisons to Frank Zappa's then new first album (so I'm not alone to compare the two producers!). But this is a weird one for several reasons. Why is the album still being referred to as
Dumb Angel here in Nov 66 when the consensus of almost every other source is that the name change happened in September or October? Was it really not until November that the album was re-christened SMiLE, and if so was it the humorous Psychedelic Sounds skits (of Nov 4 and soon after with George Fell & Veggie Argument) that prompted the title shift? That'd make intuitive sense to me but... Also, Brian says he did two trips of LSD in this article...does that mean the all-important 3rd dose Tobelman obsesses over never happened or perhaps post-dates SMiLE entirely? Hutton speculates Brian had dropped acid during the GV sessions the previous summer and Tobelman speculates it was around the same time in Big Sur. Did either of these experience really happen, and if so were they actually the second trip rather than the third as I'd assumed, or is Brian misspeaking in this article? The world will never know. Another cool detail is apparently there was a Humble Harv party that Brian attended with Vosse in Feb '67. I'm surprised this event is never talked about in any of the SMiLE sources--must not have been that interesting.
On
page 172, we get another source (however spotty, this reads like an ex post-facto fan theory) claiming Brian had no intention of cutting a single off SMiLE or even including GV, however the author uses this conjecture to argue for a "flowing suites" structure so...grain of salt. This also "confirms" something I'd speculated on, that the included booklet would've been a first for a pop act.
On
page 180 we finally get an article by the elusive Paul J Robbins, unfortunately it isn't about SMiLE, just the Monterey Pop Festival.
Page 191, there's another reference to November as the time "Dumb Angel" became "SMiLE," from Derek Taylor whom you'd think would know. I'll have to review my notes on the other sources but I'm increasingly wondering if this isn't the truth and anything suggesting earlier is in error. (As I recall, other sources were vague and just mentioned "the fall" plus Holmes claimed he delivered the cover in October, so I'd assumed that was the latest possible date and perhaps even the impetus for the change itself.) The timeline of when the comedy skits come into play is almost too perfect, it would also explain even further why the project seemingly went into flux come late Nov thru January--Brian's overall conception of what the album should be shifted suddenly and radically between the more overt humor and needing to build the LP around a new single at Anderle's request. But it's definitely still an uncertain timeline either way.
Page 195, there's a claim that "someone stole a tape" of SMiLE music. I know VDP thought Taylor gave the Beatles a sneak peek and Brian thought (not without good reason) that his tapes had been accessed without his consent but is there any evidence one was outright stolen back during the SMiLE sessions themselves--besides the GV master going missing for a few days? (And WTF was up with that anyway?? Why doesn't that get more attention--even here I couldn't really find threads about it!)
Page 210 The book has veered into some adjacent articles about VDP's
Song Cycle, which I'll admit I mostly skimmed. (I'm just not that interested in SC or VDP as a solo artist, sorry.) The transcribed conversation on this page between VDP and Anderle is pretty interesting as a rare insight into what it was like for the closest "disciples" after their former leader left them cold. There's a tinge of bitter disappointment from Anderle but still overall a sense of gratitude and well-wishes toward Brian from both men. The next page (
211) we get what looks like a weird poem about or in the style of VDP from Paul J Robbins. I'd like to come back to this later and analyze it as a standalone work of art.
The Kurt von Meier piece starting on
page 216 is a masterpiece in evading uncomfortable subjects--it doesn't even mention SMiLE proper and practically writes off the entire H&V saga as an unfortunate incident where Brian lost his way by working with an outside collaborator. By contrast, Smiley and WH are hailed as a return to form where the Boys came together again, not in service of any one man's ego. Gotta love that spin--in the pre-internet days, this kind of PR coverup must've been a lot more effective, and it's to men like Priore's credit they preserved the past so we could see how BS these anti-SMiLE narratives really were.
Page 220 begins the Anderle Crawdaddy piece, which I've also commentated on in the past. Might come back to this again later but I'm skipping it for now. On the bottom left of the same page, I kinda think that article about Sgt Pepper killing rock is funny in hindsight--I half agree. Sometimes I think there has to be a delineation between "the most important" in a medium and "the one you enjoy the most." For example, and this is coming from a huge Orson Welles fan who unironically watches
Citizen Kane for fun sometimes--is it anyone's favorite movie, really? We can acknowledge it took all the disparate filmmaking techniques that had cropped up over the decades and put them all together in a thoughtful way that showed what visual storytelling could really do when applied to its fullest potential. Absolutely. But I prefer watching
Vertigo or
Godfather on any given day. Similarly, even if I were to acknowledge
Sgt Pepper took rock to the next level (Im here and writing a virtual book about Brian, so I know he got there first with
Pet Sounds and the SMiLE Era) it doesn't mean I don't still think Joseph Byrd, Frank Zappa, Arthur Lee and the Beatles themselves have made more enjoyable albums. Also, just because something did a new thing well, like Pepper's over-production or Marvel's "cinematic universe," doesn't mean it needs to be run into the ground--let things be.
Page 224's three fan essays are perfect encapsulations of the SMiLE myth. They're the best of their kind in the book. I love psychedelic and progressive rock, but I'll agree with the sentiment that a bunch of "ponderously dull" concept albums and melodramatic pretentious rock operas have left me cold. I'm all about side-long jam sessions like Sweet Smoke's
Just a Poke if they're done well, or
Cottonwoodhill by Brainticket, but for each of those there's a
Tommy,
Lifehouse and
Mr Roboto that's so self-important and heavy-handed I just feel exhausted listening to them. (Kinda like musical theater, without the appealing visuals, impressive real life performances or good storytelling--all the negatives, none of the positives.)
[ASIDE:]I keep saying I'd love to see a rock opera where one side of the LP is carefree bouncy fun tracks, growing up when kids still played outside, then the next side is the minor keys and somber laments of adulthood's bittersweet realities. One a series of fantasy inspired, "first 65 episodes of
Rugrats aesthetic" type lyrics, the other a painful set of confessions veiled in literary allusions or pictorial metaphors. A game of tag the kid-side played is now desperately reaching out for connection in a lonely world, the ode to fun colorful junk food commercials becomes the small joy of being able to afford your own groceries, and feeling like a conquering Roman hero parading the treasures of foreign lands in your chariot (shopping cart), to be combined in a lovingly home-cooked meal. Show me the profundity in the simple things--not everything needs to be the saddest story ever told or remind me of totalitarian dictatorships to be "deep."
[/ASIDE]On
the very next page, I like Gene Sculatti's point that SMiLE is cool primarily because it's such a pure product of Brian's uniquely childlike personality. It isn't afraid to be kiddie
or high-minded; it's literary but also saturday morning cartoons with a natural flow and purpose. It does all this and more, in a way that feels genuinely Brian rather than a put-on style (like Quentin Tarantino's "Im the 70s exploitation and lowbrow violence guy!" shtick that's started to feel self-conscious to me since
Basterds, or
Sgt Pepper's deliberate attempt to seem more advanced and thoughtful than it really is, etc). There's absolutely an attempt to push boundaries but it feels grounded in the hands of a man who knew so much about music composition he was confident which rules he could break. So humble is Brian that he never bragged about this accomplishment, if anything downplaying it at every opportunity, but subsequent albums following in its example (purposefully or not) as well as the more creative fanmixes have more than justified even the wildest conceptions of the material. The availability of the pieces at our disposal, combined with intuitive speculation that's plausible enough to fill in the gaps, sets it apart from other lost works, such as the missing plays of Euripedes, or junked footage of
The Magnificent Ambersons, which are beyond our abilities to restore with any real claim to accuracy.
^Sculatti speaks of the "cinematic quality" to something like CCW, and this too is what makes SMiLE special--it's audio that transcends into the visual plane so well thanks to his pictorial MO--it's as visceral and universal a presentation as PS despite the more high-minded content. This is what Walt Disney's
Fantasia should've been, original and unique American composers making music that people could paint to, on a Panavision screen no less, and let symphonies tell stories. (Imagine the music of SMiLE driving the dreamy narrative of a
Yellow Submarine or
Belladonna of Sadness esque psychedelic animated film, using Frank Holmes' artstyle as its inspiration? That's one of my dream movies--and it wouldn't even feel like a janky jukebox musical in the way YS or similar projects have, since the songs are so naturally interconnected and narrative.) SMiLE isn't trying WAY too hard to be edgy and thought-provoking the way
The Wall, death metal or a lot of lesser prog rock concept albums are, it's honest and vulnerable and fun-loving, which is what makes it cooler than anything else in the medium.
By
page 246, I noticed that every time I've seen the elements listed out here (that I can recall) it's been in the order: earth, air, fire and water, same as on BWPS. This obviously isn't hard proof but it begs the question if that was the unofficial order Brian threw out to reporters back in the day, and something he remembered in 2003. With Darian clearly disagreeing on AT LEAST ONE major decision of Brian's for the sequence (remember he said essentially: "[Brian] gets it right about 9/10s of the time and it sounds amazing" in the 2005 Priore book) I'm going to bet it was this, because it's pretty clearly a janky sequence at least with the "pseudo-elements" of VT/WC/MOLC/LtSD, but it seems plausible Brian recalled the order and wanted to keep it even without specially written music for the missing elements (just the leftovers after they "touched up the first two movements then added a third"). So it was a vintage idea performed somewhat haphazardly in a way that doesn't really honor what the original album would've been but ties in some "favorite son" theories of Priore & Leaf's so they write all their articles and liner notes telling us this was clearly the definitive plan all along, ie BWPS in a nutshell. Anyway, it's different than what Diane Rovell says in TSS or my preferred method of dealing with the Elements, but I think it's at least as likely and therefore worth pointing out.
^It's possible '66 Brian would've come up with a way to make this work--maybe Veggies with the argument leading into Smog talking about pollution making people want to kill each other over the Breathing chant getting more asthmatic as his monolog ramps up in intensity, then culminating in Fire before cooling down with the water-spliced Dada (Water Chant coming at the end though, not the beginning). This would be a more natural buildup of increasingly negative emotions then a climactic release and cool down (as Brian says on the PS tape "we've got to fight and then make up!"), as opposed to BWPS' clumsy "happy-calm-anxiety attack-laid back" emotional rollercoaster. I even wonder now if the Lifeboat tape wasn't originally an intended finale to the Elements last segment, with the lifeboat participants either continuing a silly argument to callback to the Veggie Fight (though yet unrecorded it could've been a twinkle in Brian's eye even then) or perhaps getting along and refusing to vote anyone out and therefore representing a positive conversation to balance the earlier negative argument. Does this make sense to anyone but me?
Page 250 re-confirms the "business called for a new single" moment as the crippling blow. Same article though says CE was originally part of "Who Ran the Iron Horse" when it's the other way around, as well as that VDP dropped out in Feb '66. (Not necessarily wrong, this date is fuzzy.)
I've read the Nick Kent article "
The Last Beach Boys Movie" before so I'm not gonna comment on that again.
Priore isn't even consistent with his lies in his own published works. On
page 270 he posts an article about his own book, where he is quoted saying SMiLE was "finished recording" in December 1966. The people who study the tapes for a living would be the first ones to tell you this is bullshit, that even "finished" songs were only completed years later, to say nothing of the obvious holes in Worms, Child Elements & SU among others. The SMiLE we know now is only an unfortunate patchwork of disparate takes and separate versions of songs frankensteined together. It's only a testament to how fantastic and interconnected the material still is that it works as well as it does even in this diminished state (or BWPS' similarly flawed condition).
Page 271 is cool to have, however semi-legible it is, just to see the entire SMiLE sessionography on one convenient page really puts it into perspective. (I'm not gonna go date by date and compare it to Bellagio--if it were a new book I might, but I don't think it matters much if this 40 year old tome got a few dates wrong at this point and others like WillJC & Joshilyn will or wont prove it accurate with their more in-depth scholarship than what I'm doing.)
Page 272 contains myths and their debunkings as published by "Record Collector" magazine, with Priore correcting the record of a previous SMiLE story they must have published. (Was that included earlier in the book? If so I missed it but seems to me he should've put it right before this piece if so.) In answer to the first myth (Brian "fried his brains on drugs") Priore rebuts that Mike is the one "incoherently babbling on" in an Our Prayer tape. I can't recall ever hearing this but I'm not the most thorough in my collection of bootlegs (believe it or not) so if anyone can confirm...
Point #9, Priore claims that Desper has attested to a tape of the Elements "suite." Can anyone confirm, does Desper say this? Is it in the book and I've somehow missed it? Unless he's talking about just Fire alone, or the Nov 4 Psychedelic Sounds "fitness element" demos, this surely can't be real can it? The extensive TSS tape inventory doesn't mention anything of the sort, nor AGD nor any other source I've ever seen (which is practically everything at this point--another reason I've done this, to leave no significant stone unturned).
Point #10, Priore acts like he's an authority on "Inspiration" but doesn't seem to realize it's a different name for some of the GV sessions.
Point #13, I agree with him that George Fell/Talking Horns wouldn't have been track names on the LP proper, but I see no reason not to refer to that particular session recording as some kind of commonly identifiable name. For what it's worth, Priore seems to consider these types of tracks to be valid pieces of SMiLE here, comparing them to the Heroes "You're under arrest" as is my position. I agree with
Point #16, the Capitol lawsuit and ensuing corporate-legalistic shenanigans are collectively the #1 reason SMiLE died, with the tape thefts a stupidly overlooked culprit as well. The GV tape going missing is shocking and almost completely justifies Brian's spiraling paranoia. Gary Usher is an unsung villain of this story, whose name has largely escaped condemnation thanks to Leaf & Co's obsession with demonizing Mike.
Page 276, is there anything in the mentioned Vigotone 66-page full-color booklet of period interviews that's significant and not included elsewhere like LLVS itself? Is it true that all SMiLE bootlegs came primarily from these 4 cited leaked tapes?
With regard to
pages 283 and
284, I admit I never, until this moment, connected Surf's Up's opera imagery with the gilded age robber barons but that does make total sense. I remember my dad even watching that History Channel "Men Who Built America" show back in the day that talked about millionaires like Carnegie building their opera houses or libraries as public services to sort of justify their obscene wealth in their later years. That's a very cool revelation, so much so that some of the other "flaws" in this article ("iron horse" as the chorus to Heroes, etc) don't bother me. They make note of the same chord progressions at the end of SU matching with Prayer, further justification in my eyes for concluding SMiLE with prayer rather than starting it. (Although it would create a bookended "full circle" thing if you start with Prayer and Brian says it was the intro on tape, so I completely understand those who choose to do it that way too.) This also goes to show that the themes of Americana would not have been firmly relegated to separate groupings/sides--there's going to be some cross-over, some tracks that don't neatly/completely fit either "suite" no matter how you try to break them up. Heroes as a whole is like a male counterpart to the Wonderful story, as another example.
Page 289, I'll admit Priore's explanation for why Veggies and Chimes are listed separately from The Elements yet still part of "the suite" is interesting. He states that they were intended for singles, hence getting singled out for greater attention. It's not a ridiculous assertion and if he had greater reason to think at least WC was air and Dada was water beyond "
there HAS to be an air/water...Brian wouldn't have just...not finished something on this unfinished album would he? No...the album was all done by December, remember? The final cancelled session was an album mixdown, dontcha know?" I'd by it. But he doesn't and besides there's no indication WC was even supposed to be a B-side until Smiley (Wonderful and Dada and even CIFOTM have a better claim as the potential b-sides to Heroes or Veggies) especially when there are essays in and outside the book confirming Brian originally wanted no additional singles until Anderle told him BRI needed one. So, it's not a terrible argument in a vacuum but the evidence doesn't bare it out--I still think he made up his mind already and is using arguments like this to justify his own preconceived answer.
Page 290, I just fundamentally disagree with the sensibilities of anyone who wants to listen to the Cantina H&V going straight into what Priore even knows is just 4 random disconnected "heroes and villains" chants one after the other in Part 2. If that's really what Part 2 was, if the people claiming to have heard a two-part 5~6 minute acetate aren't pulling our legs or hearing some last minute alt-arrangement by Brian of which no paperwork describes, I think the two-part Heroes would've been a dud. In any boot or mix I've heard that crosses the ~5:30 barrier, I start to get bored, because it means throwing in random chants or alt-segues at the wall and the song comes apart under its own weight. Even when I tried to include a "H&V (Reprise)" on my Aquarian SMiLE mix, I separated the two so that they book-ended the entire Americana suite. But yeah, this much Heroes in one sustained bloc of music is too much for me and I suspect a lot of other people; without new verses from VDP and linking music that simply doesn't exist to tie the more left-field sections together, there's not enough raw material to make a "Moulton mix" of Heroes. This is why I've never been particularly interested in the "was there a two-sided Heroes single" or "what was part 2??" nor will I be until we ever find a lost Heroes tape with more "meat" to work with.
It's funny, I was told my theories on SMiLE were ridiculous back in the day and I'd see reason if only I read this book. I said "hey man, I'm in college and can't really commit to reading this whole book in a timely manner for the time being, can you tell me what're the most important articles to start with? Or what pages/sources in the book specifically prove me wrong?" I was told "read the Vosse Fusion article" and then I find out, lo and behold, it's not even in the book. Arguably the single best article on SMiLE (GSHG has some tall tales and predated the breakup so it's incomplete by comparison), the one this guy said was essential...it's not even here. (My version goes just past 280 pages). So that guy I was arguing with didn't even read his own book, or couldn't remember, he just wanted to gatekeep me and no one else stood up for me and called him out on it. And nothing in Vosse's Fusion article nor LLVS disproves my theories either, except some of Priore's own baseless conjecture once again passed off as fact. (It'd be one thing if any of these vintage articles had independently claimed the things he says but they don't--Priore just pulled sh*t out of his ass because it's how he wanted things to be, then lied about a secret conversation with Brian to justify it.) I know I must sound petty talking about this, but I don't care--I want the record to be known here once and for all, there's nothing in LLVS that goes into any kind of sequence one way or the other to back up Priore's claims. It's mostly puff pieces designed to sell the then-imminent product, then circle-jerking lamentations on the album that never was for the umpteenth time, rehashing the "it broke Brian" myth and reminding us how awesome GV and PS were. I'm not saying these articles aren't important historical documents but there's little revelatory info on SMiLE's structure, composition, inspiration...anything I came here to learn.
I have to say, after all the hype I was pretty disappointed with this book--and not just because my opinion on Priore's influence in the SMiLE conversation has been more con than pro. But while still a great "time capsule" my thought upon reaching the end was "I've never seen someone use so many words to tell me (almost) nothing." A few scattered nuggets of info aside, mostly front-loaded (once you start getting into the articles about SMiLE's death instead of its imminent release, the book gets way less interesting) it's just the same basic anecdotes you've heard a million times ad nauseum. It'd not
just because I've read almost every "official" word that's been printed about SMiLE, though that certainly doesn't help, but even within its own binding the info becomes repetitive. There's only so many ways to say "this would've been the best album ever / Brian was troubled and business got in the way / the songs included xx, yy, zz..." without thinking "yes, and..?" But maybe that's just me. I skimmed the ex post facto fan essays with a few exceptions so maybe somebody could correct me if I'm wrong but at least one or two of them I think are blatantly repeated in different spots in the book.
Overall though, while a great resource and invaluable salvaging of most (the vast majority?) of the secondary sources, I think the definitive "SMiLE archaeology" collection has yet to be made. One that preserves the original articles completely intact, presents them by date or subject matter, maybe includes different "highlighter colors" to indicate particularly revelatory info (gold) and/or false/out of date info (light green). No cutsie overlapping columns to emphasize the "scrapbook aesthetic" at the expense of legibility. Including an index and table of contents are essential. Perhaps one or a series of commentaries on the articles as I've been doing, giving background into the authors/periodicals or balancing the weight of conflicting info against each other.
[ASIDE:] I'm now wondering if the horns in SU aren't first the pep-rally of a parade or patriotic standard, malevolently calling the narrator to arms in service of a misguided cause, when played over "handsome man and baton." Then these similar but distinct horn parts in the second verse now symbolize laughing (hence the whole "laughing horns" exercise at the Geroge Fell session) children calling him to action for the true, noble cause, just as he is awoken to "a song dissolved in the dawn" (the children's song itself). Then my speculated "moaning horn" part from "Dove nested towers..." to "broken man too tough to cry," would be the inner conflict between the two working itself out in the Speaker's conscience as he decides which side to choose. He realizes his calling is to the genuinely expressed music of children/the innocent not the overly dressed-up, false-sentiment, commercialized robber baron funded product he's been forced to churn out (and used to manipulate us into submission). This is when the song genuinely would break down to just the Speaker/Brian and piano, before the horns come back in that wailing crescendo to express what music truly is--an artist crying out their vulnerable passions, lessons and worries to the world, letting their soul cry out so to speak. Perhaps then, as a little joke to ideally make the listener laugh and therefore (according to Brian's views) become more open to having a spiritual revelation, we'd get the talking horns, a snippet of "George Fell" conversation, as an unlisted epilogue of sorts.
In short, the horns' bisociative counterpart is the narrator's conscience or inner conflict expressed in four distinct sounds representing his emotional catharsis in as many steps. (With a possible tongue-in-cheek spoken word about it after, so really 5 sounds.) That's an unspoken aspect of its brilliance and part of why we NEED to move past "what are the other elements" and get on to looking at SMiLE in different contexts--like using Koestler's book or the I Ching as a lens!
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