My Last (?) Crack at the SMiLE Jigsaw

[Julia]

Revisiting the Goodbye Surfing, Hello God article.

1. If he isn't conflating separate instances, then Jules came onto the scene in early October. We can infer this when he says he'd been following Brian for two months at the Fire session.

2. Terry Sachen was Brian's limo driver. I was trying to find this info earlier when looking for names to fill out a deck of cards and couldn't find it anywhere. So Im glad somebody preserved this bit of trivia.

3. Brian told his guests about SMiLE being a teenage symphony to God in October. The cutlery symphony is also implied to have been the same day, and Siegel mentions there were plates set up for 10 people when this happened. (Brian, Marilyn, Siegel, his girlfriend, the Anderles, Vosse...Diane Rovell? Barbara Rovell Gaddy and her husband? Can anyone think of a more plausible group of 10? Maybe Danny Hutton or Paul Jay Robbins and their girlfriends?)

^Almost all the coolest, most endearing, tantalizing behind the scenes anecdotes of SMiLE occur in October. That was the height of the SMiLE era, when Brian's enthusiasm, plus his coterie's hype was at peak levels. I think the recording of the first two Psychedelic Sounds sessions(: Lifeboat in 10-25 and PS itself on 11-4,) represent a turning point in the same way as Fire and the shift to the singles in January, as well as VDP leaving and recording in Bellagio. These are the chapters we can divide the story into:

1) "pre-SMiLE" or the Dumb Angel period, May - July '66
2) "early SMiLE" or the Optimistic period, August - Oct '66 
3) "mid SMiLE" or the BB's Return & Discord, Nov - Dec '66 
4) "late SMiLE" or the Single-Focus & Distraction, Jan - Feb '67
5) "post-SMiLE" or the Interrim period, March - May '67   
6) "Smiley Smile" or the Bellagio Sessions, June - July '67

4. VDP is said to have been hired in the summer. It's not clarified when but with context clues I think very late summer can be inferred here. If it was closer to May like Badman suggests, it just raises the questions of what the hell they were doing all summer and why so much remained undone, why Brian waited so long to record their music, etc. August simplifies the timeline so well and is attested to by other reliable sources, like Vosse and Will.

5. The "dinner-plate concerto" is said to have been the "first hip social event" that Brian hosted, and that's when he divided out tasks to those present, which really set SMiLE in motion. Not just the album itself, but it's larger purpose of reinventing the BBs as a hip entity with their own record label and movie division. I think Brian meant for this exercise to impress his guests by demonstrating his skills at spontaneous harmonic arrangement, even with unconventional tools at his disposal. I don't think it was intended to be on the album at all, not even that night, but rather to show his future-disciples that their leader could make great music out of anything on a whim, no studio editing required. Obviously it was successful. 

^This coincides with Vosse's account, who made it sound like everything (hearing SMiLE, getting hired, even the I Ching warning) all happened in one night--his wording is slightly ambiguous if it was all at once or if the I Ching part happened a week later, but either way it all went very fast. Anyway, the suggestion when harmonizing both sources is that it was all in one magical early October night, just before GV came out, when Brian was on top of the world and the only thing that could stop him was himself.

^This is my biggest beef with the various biopics about the group--this feeling of magic is never captured in them. Reading about scenes like this always makes me wish I could've been there, that I too were invited to participate in the coolest project ever. That's the hook this story needs to make the audience care about SMiLE and weep when it comes undone. I keep using Gatsby as a comparison because it's the same story arc, where the hero fails but we love him for trying, we love his style and the scenes he creates with his awesome house and salon of "hip people." If you don't have the audience saying "man I wish I could've hung out with '66 Brian" when they watch a BB reenactment, you failed to make the story land.

6. Vosse said he was hired before Anderle, who wouldn't get the BRI job until about a month later--Siegel mostly confirms that when he says it was "within six weeks" of that first fateful night, where Brian conducted the chinaware. This is a tight, reasonably harmonized window of events.   

7. Heroes is said to have been basically done going into 1967, which coincides with Anderle's testimony that it was selected as the single solely because it was "the closest to being finished." The 1967 sessions are dismissed by Siegel as excessive tinkering--unfortunately almost all of the pre-67 material for the song is lost, so we'll never know the version that everyone thought was great except Brian himself.

8. VDP left, then came back and left again. (We know this by now, but it's worth pointing out another corroborating source on important points like this.)

9. The Seconds anecdote is relayed in full (except Anderle isn't mentioned being there, but the quotes are the same except Brian's swipe at Jews is missing--I'm wondering if it even happened) and Brian mentions "the Beatles album" in this version of the story. The way this anecdote is relayed after Siegel talks about Brian's increasingly erratic behavior in the new year suggests Brian saw the film closer to the end of its run, in January (or at least December) and this is further implied with the beginning of the next scene, where he writes: "as the year drew deeper into winter" (rather than "as winter approached" or something). So perhaps we can date this incident to late Dec - early Jan as opposed to Nov when the film was released on the west coast, and that only makes it even more likely Brian was referring to Revolver instead of Rubber Soul, which would've been out 3+ months by then. (There's NO WAY any important music industry people weren't flocking to hear the new Beatles release ASAP, especially Brian as both a big fan and seeing them as his chief competition. No chance he hadn't heard it in all that time.)   

11. The construction of the sandbox is implied to be in 1967, but that contradicts Brian's insistence he wrote the first four SMiLE songs in it. The heated sauna in the bathroom is mentioned here as well as a detail I don't recall from any other source--the windows were grayed out. I personally think Siegel is using "creative editing" here to make his point, mentioning one of Brian's weirder anecdotes later in time to emphasize his unraveling. (I said I'd be willing to do the same if I ever made a movie about the SMiLE sessions--it's what adaptations do--but Siegel is supposed to be a journalist, so I scoff at this if that's his intent here.) 

12. Siegel describes the situation of being barred in the third person but the emotion is palpable. He thought he'd gotten close with Brian and was hurt to learn it wasn't reciprocated. It must've stung to think everything's cool and then Brian didn't even have the guts to tell him in person. This is another of Brian's genuinely shitty moments, like expecting his friends to drive to the studio/LAX on a whim in the middle of the night, making VDP sing or act like a clown on command in front of others, not sharing his vision with the Boys, not letting Al listen to the new Beatles song when Paul came to visit, choosing Daro/drugs over Marilyn... We have to accept that as much as we love the guy and his music, Brian could be kind of an asshole sometimes. I certainly wouldn't want to put up with a lot of this behavior. 

^While Siegel clearly wasn't popular with the others, I don't think he meant any harm. Without knowing him personally I can only deduce he had annoying personality quirks but clearly wasn't a mean person and still wrote a very laudatory piece here despite the personal grievance and watching this guy screw up a good thing for no visible reason. Many lesser men would've thought "f*** that jerk, I'm gonna follow my boss' directive and write about how much he dropped the ball." Jules didn't do that, and refused to edit his story into a hit-piece, which cost him a publishing credit in the prestigious Saturday Evening Post rather than defame Brian. That's true friendship. Siegel was a well-meaning guy who deserves respect and should've been given the opportunity to speak his piece on the TSS liner notes--even if he did sound like an annoying dweeb on the Lifeboat tape.

13. It's said that Vosse couldn't even hide his satisfaction at kicking Siegel out, sporting a big grin when he delivered the bad news. Vosse is said to have been fired "a couple of months" later. So I'm guessing Siegel was out by late December or January at the latest. I'm leaning towards January since he knew about the Heroes tinkering. This version of events doesn't contradict anything offhand, I can buy this timeline.

There's a lot more to this article that would be groundbreaking news to a SMiLE-initiate but at this stage in my all-encompassing fandom, these are the anecdotes which stood out to me now. Besides the obsession with "hipness" and some overly show-y prose at times, it's a great article and full of what seems to be accurate info based on my preponderance of the evidence. The only potential falsehoods are the sandbox mentioned out of date plus the fire incident but that's been repeated even by Brian so I don't know if we can blame Jules for starting what is now seen as a questionable detail.

[Julia]

I think you have all the materials at hand now to assemble a book, Julia. It is now just a question of how to organize for the reader.

Im extremely flattered you think this would make a good book. I was just gonna cross-post to my blog I'm open to suggestions but I thought of it as a journal, writing about my interpretation of SMiLE as I went. It started with me revisiting the topic after Brian's passing--browsing the Wiki article to see how it's changed, rereading Carlin...and then I realized I didn't know when Brian and Van actually teamed up so I googled it and found the Internet Archive copy of the Badman book, which was how this started. Then I wanted to read other books/articles where the most interesting tidbits from the wiki were sourced from and after a certain point it became "I guess Im gonna weigh ALL the evidence and try to be as well-read on the subject as possible."

The person who might have more concrete timeline details than what is extant elsewhere is Durrie Parks, who has some tantalizing quotes in David Leaf's SMiLE book. (Did you notice the fact that the Parkses actually moved into the spare bedroom at Laurel Way for an unspecified period of time? The question that arises is when did they depart? It seems that too much familiarity and proximity resulted in some escalating friction...)

Yes, I did! That might be the single most shocking revelation of the new book! It literally changes everything and because of it, I'm willing to believe theories that otherwise would've seemed absurd to me--like juggler's speculation that CIFOTM was a Brian-Dennis collab. It makes no sense an entire song would be left unfinished when they had infinite access to each other. It's so insane no other source mentions it--you'd think Vosse would have a throwaway line about it or something. Anderle, when he speaks of the relationship fracturing, you'd imagine would bring it up. Just goes to show there's so much we don't know and cannot know.

That said, the key point amidst the riches of your latest synthesis from Vosse's piece (and I agree that it is by far the best snapshot of the period that's available to us) is that a path to a 1967 SMiLE was possible had certain things been avoided.
The multiple versions that could constitute a released version should (IMO) be what a book leads toward, where they are discussed as potential real-life decision points for the different track listings. Some of the early intentions might have dropped out as the project moved toward completion (assuming Brian masters the HV situation). For me the best solution he had was to create a single and an album suite where HV connected with various parts of the Americana material. I think that's kind of where he got to in March, but at that time he was burned out--the same heebie-jeebies that plagued him with GV had kicked in. SMiLE only happens if he gets past that--which I think would have been possible if MOLC hadn't thrown things sideways, leading to the December contretemps.

I'd like that. From the first, it's always been my goal to challenge what I perceived then (and confirmed now) to be widespread inaccurate assumptions about the album. I had the gut feeling in 2013 after playing around with mixes and landing on my preferred Americana/Innocence structure that this was the true SMiLE. While I'm less dogmatic on that now, I still think Priore's Americana/Elements model is not only a flawed presentation but (now confirmed) completely unproven. Even in his own books, he doesn't justify it in the slightest, his conclusions don't come from an examination of the evidence (be it testimony, context clues, chords/instrument analysis, lyrical themes, etc) they're just pulled from thin air and rationalized with lies--like that ridiculous secret conversation in the 80s. A conversation which, I now have on good authority, ended with Brian yelling words to the effect of "get this guy out of my fucking house!"

I did not enter into this deep dive with the goal of decrying Priore--in fact I wanted to learn the truth whatever it was, and if there were good reasons his ideas had taken hold I was ready to acknowledge the facts and relegate my SMiLE sequence to the "I prefer this, even if it's inaccurate" category. However, the more I learned the clearer it became Priore has no business being held up as an authority on the subject. He's a blatant liar and has been given a wildly outsized role in the fandom. It's high time some other framework for organizing the music took precedence, and I've suggested several alternatives in these many posts. It need not be a SMiLE of two themes, but of flats/sharps or whatever else.

What you suggest is very reasonable--it does seem like there was a distinction between "this could be/was a Hero fragment" and "everything else" when looking at key signatures. There is, I now admit, a good case that Wonderful and even CIFOTM were perhaps the narrator of Heroes reflecting on his child(ren)'s upbringings rather than a generic Innocence suite. I'm not sure if I personally prefer the new sequences that could emerge from this over my old theories but there's enough evidence to justify it and it's worth trying.

If that hurdle is cleared and Brian sets The Elements aside, then track order variants will also hinge on Capitol's desire for GV to be on the record. I think you have plenty of room in a book (possibly a chapter called "So Just Would a 1967 SMiLE Have Looked Like?") to cover all the variants, including those w/o GV...though you do need to consider how to rank the likelihood for each as part of the assessment. (There is still room for personal preference/advocacy, however--that writing flavor is part of what will sweep the reader along and make this into what will be the eternally freshest take on "what might have been."

I can dig this. I do think there's SOMETHING to the master #s for example. It shouldn't be considered the end all be all of evidence but I think changes in the master for Heroes for example may signal changes in its structure--from a series of OMP variations to Barnyard-Heroes to Cantina-Heroes etc. We'll never know for sure but there had to be different "Eras" of each song.

BTW, Cam's comment does not make sense to me at all. (I couldn't find it there, so there might be more context to it, but remember that Cam was the originator of the notion that the master #s were the key to everything.) The escalating pushback from the band in December and the disastrous-in-retrospect edict from Anderle that they needed a single clearly made things more fraught for Brian, but the amount of studio wizardry expended on HV in early 67 puts the lie to the idea that Brian had totally soured on elaborate production. HV gobbled up so much time that he had little left over to revisit/resolve other tracks that were in various states of completion--it sure looks like March is that point in time...which dovetails with the departure of Vosse and Anderle. And that is when the transition to Smiley really begins...

I agree. The first quote was here (https://endlessharmony.boards.net/thread/880/tale-leavings-cabinessence-incident?page=6&scrollTo=100231) which paints a very different picture than what he followed up with here (https://endlessharmony.boards.net/thread/880/tale-leavings-cabinessence-incident?page=6&scrollTo=100243). The first post implied Brian didn't think the music was good anymore upon listening to it sober for the first time (since he'd been high nonstop for 4 months apparently) the latter clarifies that he was scared of the Fire tape and the negative vibes it represented--that drugs had strung him out too much and were no longer aiding the creative process. That's a significant difference and admittedly it goes to show how editiorialized quotes and reactions can give different impressions than what was originally said. (Another reason I encourage everyone to read the original sources too--this thread is just me trying to suss out what's important in each one and use that data to construct an overriding picture of what happened and what SMiLE was/would've been. I'm not trying to render the sources obsolete I'm trying to weigh the various accounts to get a "big picture.")

I dont think Brian soured on big production (or Wrecking Crew production anyway) until March '67. That's when suddenly a bunch of songs are just Brian on piano, maybe with Carl on another instrument. I think Smiley represents Brian's attempt to preserve the basic themes, tone, humor, sound effects and psychedelia of SMiLE without the Wrecking Crew productions, modular editing, recording hours of tape just to tediously hunt for highlights after, excising the band from the creative process and grand "symphony to God" aspirations. SMiLE is somewhere between the Pet Sounds lush orchestral and Smiley stoned party aesthetics--it's up to the listener/mixer where they place it along that spectrum.

[Julia]

Why not? Guess I ought to revisit the Anderle/Williams Crawdaddy interviews too. There's nothing left. I remember finding these really boring ten years ago but back then I was looking for info on SMiLE's sequence, what would be included, what Brian's plans were. Now, I'm still interested in that, but I'm also looking for interpersonal info and pinning down timeline events.

1. I share the two's disappointment to WH. I've never understood the enthusiasm for this very-short, very lo-fi (and not in a cool Smiley-esque experimental way) very screechy album. Especially because SOME of the biggest fans of it I've seen, at least among the forums, are also the biggest jerks, the ones who'd make fun of me for talking about SMiLE. So in my mind there's a permanent association of "this is the square BB music for boomers" even more than the hits, which are eternal. But WH I feel is very dated and out of step with its own genre--Carl may be an R&B fan but his voice wasn't suited for these songs, he sounds way too whiny to me on the title track. Mike's voice, or y'know, a deep-voiced dreamy black guy akin to Marvin Gaye and Barry White, should be belting out these tunes. Just had to get that out of my system.

2. Very first thing they talk about, after briefly expressing disappointment with SS and WH, is the Beach Boys limiting Brian, holding back his experimentation. It's literally only two-inches down the page in the first of three columns on the first page of the article (Im reading the LLVS reproduction). It's so clear that this is the fundamental issue of why SMiLE died--and I went into this research seeking to downplay this angle, but we can't deny how frequently it comes up, how emphasized it is. It's always the main reason cited for the collapse, whether we like it or not. I see our friend mike (the poster not the BB) taking flak for this on EH and all I can say is that element of the fandom would rather bully anyone off the internet than acknowledge their precious Mike (the BB now, not the poster) ever did anything wrong. They want to believe in a fairytale where the group always got along and any problems were because of those evil outsiders...they did drugs! (gasp)...so clearly they were acting against Brian's best interests.

3. Anderle mentions how they (including himself and Brian, others aren't specifically mentioned but I imagine this is the Vosse Posse) used to lay around the house doing "Hawaiian chants and all kinds of chanting, and all kinds of animal noises." This isn't a direct reference to the Nov 4 stuff but it implies that kind of thing was going on all the time--Brian would use whoever was available to try out vocalization experiments. This has always been my theory and I still don't understand why it's considered controversial. It's not like Anderle says this was just stoned goofing off, he even mentions Brian would be scared to try it out when the guys got back--implying these were serious demos he wanted them to refine with their perfect blend upon return. It's literally right there in black and white he used the Posse as his guinea pigs--we should be thanking the Gods we have a few preserved rough demos of this kind with the Nov 4 tapes, instead of dismissing them (because drugs? because you don't like how they sound? because it ruins your WC=Air theory?) and castigating anyone who brings them up. Sorry to be a pedantic asshole about it but the people who refuse to acknowledge these recordings really piss me off--it's insane to prioritize a very narrow, cherry picked interpretation of a quote from over a decade later to something Brian thought was important enough to devote an hour of tape to at a time when he could've recorded anything he wanted. And somehow Im the one "hobby horsing..."

4. As much as I love Brian, Anderle and the dream of BRI ("the first real nonuptight, positive, youth company"), I think the corporation as described here would've failed. Just like Radiant Radish and the Beatles' various non-music related businesses. These young creative types didn't know the value of a dollar, had no business sense, were too lax for their own good. It's a beautiful sentiment but realistically this would've just been a bunch of pampered rich youngins throwing money around until they went bankrupt--or they'd have to compromise on these principles. There'd have to be a boss, or a money guy yelling they needed a more commercial hit under the umbrella to keep the rest afloat, which would gradually morph into a regular company. That's how these things go. Ideally maybe Brian and Anderle could've been like Walt & Roy Disney--the creative pushing for art for art's sake and the business savvy advisor supporting that dream but tempering it where necessary so the overall operation remains viable. But these types of partnerships are always tenuous and fleeting--as soon as someone changes or moves on it always goes downhill.

5. It's sort of night and day listening to Tony Asher (or other Brian detractors) make fun of the "dopey" books he'd read compared to Anderle just gushing about the man, his ability to pour over any subject (subud, astrology, numerology, the occult then the I ching in that order) and saying "the most perceptive man I ever met is Brian Wilson." I think Vosse and especially Siegel really appreciated Brian too, as a person beyond his genius, but Anderle I think loved him as much as anyone can platonically love another man.

6. Despite emphasizing twice in separate parts of the early interview how the band pushed back against Brian's growth as an artist, Anderle does emphasize there was no ringleader of the opposition. He singles out Mike as the "most antagonistic" but goes to lengths to emphasize "they're very close, there's a great deal of love..." I think we need to be nuanced when we discuss Mike's pushback on SMiLE--it didn't come from a place of maliciousness or personal animosity. It was a strongly felt and vocally expressed creative disagreement, but not a personal feud. He didn't know or intend for Brian's creative spirit to be crushed (which arguably wasn't until post-Friends or even post-71) and he still wanted Brian to be the creative leader overall. I think that's how this aspect of the story ought to be framed going forward--don't deny that Mike criticized Brian's new sound (because that contradicts EVERY SOURCE) but let it be known he wasn't trying to hurt Brian's feelings. And for my part, I don't even blame Mike for anything related to SMiLE--my problems with him have to do with how he behaved afterward, and never rising to the occasion creatively after the fact.

7. In support of the "CIFOTM was Dennis' collab w/ Brian" theory, Anderle says Dennis was working on his own things while Anderle was around and they were "beautiful." Could this be IDK alone? Maybe but to me IDK always sounded really generic and nothing special--that's why I almost never acknowledge it and didn't even notice some of its tapes were missing until very recently.

8. I think the reason why there isn't a second CE incident that we hear about is because that's not how the guys expressed their frustrations. The BB/Mike apologists over at EH are always using that "gotcha" comeback to "prove" the band wasn't antagonistic. ("All Mike did was ask about some lyrics--which he had every right to do--and then sang them anyway!") But what Anderle and Vosse describe is more of constant grumbling in the studio, whining when given their new parts, complaining between takes, little incessant needling remarks that weren't a big deal in a vacuum but piled up. It wasn't a big dramatic shouting match so much as the constant dread of a sensitive person like Brian knowing he was going to face negativity in the studio each day, and it wore him down over time. (Like Marilyn describes in the IJWMFTT documentary and elsewhere.) Then when you point this out to the pro-BB/Mike faction, they downplay it ("oh, so just a few stray barbs is a crime now?") and it's a disingenuous talking point. Constant denigration definitely takes its toll on a person, especially a highly sensitive guy on the verge on a mental breakdown. It doesn't make the group monsters, just inconsiderate.

9. "Brian, a long time ago, was incredibly interested in humor, pure, beautiful, positive humor [...] Well, Brian was into that a long time ago; he wanted to put out the first pop humor album, and we spent days and nights running around the city tape recording different sounds and different things and getting into the most incredibly humorous things."

^And to think, I was told if I read this article it'd prove to me my theory on the importance of Psychedelic Sounds was unfounded. Seriously guy, get this quote tattooed on your forehead and call it a day. Of course the excuse to discount quotes like this include "oh uhh that was a separate humor album," but I've always been skeptical of that. If this supposed separate project had a name, a tracklist, vintage Brian quotes, more in-depth discussion from the principals maybe. But my theory is that this and SMiLE were always one and the same, the doubters (from then and now) just find the idea of a pop humor LP so ridiculous and unmelodic they refuse to believe what the evidence tells us. I'd have to look back through my notes again but I don't think any of the primary sources even delineate between SMiLE and separate spoken comedy / sound effects albums. Even if they were separate there was clearly CLEARLY a lot of crossover between them.

^If we suppose for the sake of argument the Nov 4 session was for a separate project it still has prominent element-themed harmonic vocalizations. If we supposed the Veggie Fight and George Fell were also non-SMiLE, they were recorded during actual SMiLE sessions and based on themes from SMiLE tracks. I think a separate humor album is a misunderstanding and red herring. The fact that Smiley Smile has stoned laughing and humor tracks like SGB is proof--as are the vintage quotes about talking and laughing between cuts. People just want SMiLE to be Pet Sound 2 and refuse to accept it would've been radically different. "Mistakes" and seemingly discordant elements would've been left in. The humor tracks Brian had included on BB albums from the beginning would've been more fully integrated into the music and themes.

^There's literally a mountain of evidence pre, post and during the SMiLE sessions that spoken word humor would be there, from Brian's quotes to Vosse/Anderle (and others) plus 4 different tapes rubbing elbows with the CE/SU backing tracks in the vault. The only argument against is "but I dont think that'd sound good / but that ruins my personal pet theory that I've decided is unquestionable!" This is what I mean when I insist we have to start throwing out the Priore misconceptions and let the evidence take us where it may. For the record, I don't personally think the humor skits improve SMiLE either, at least not necessarily, but that doesn't mean we can just pretend the entire MO of the album wasn't real.

10. Going off that, I think we need to take heed of another thing Anderle says (and other sources like Vosse and Hutton attest to) that a lot of Brian's ideas sounded insane at first, but then you'd do it and realize he was onto something. He was so ahead of the curve that he seemed to be pitching nonsense until the fully realized version was experienced and then it all made sense. So while others and even I myself might think interspersed comedic asides or wheezy breaths in a song might not sound all that great, might in fact ruin some of these beautiful compositions, we ought to at least consider the possibility that if we could hear the final edit of the thing, what Brian was hearing in his head, we might just be blown away by how well it all fit together. (This is what I suspect--and I think my version of Veggie Fight during the fade is an example of it, same as the Talking Horns wailing sound over the SU coda. And Brian's versions Im sure would've been even better.)

11. "This is how he got into, for instance, the chanting: one night we were at the studio, and Brian didn't feel like putting down a track. We were just laying around, and he said,"Come out here, everyone." So we all went out there, not one of us a professional, and he had us making animal noises, incredible noises, directing us from the control room: "Louder." "Softer." "More expansive." "Get in closer." The whole thing. We started off very conscious of what we were doing, looking at each other and very embarrassed, and then he just drove us into it, totally. We went into the studio and listened to it; he put it with music, we listen-ed to it again and walked out knowing that once again Brian had done it."

^Could this be the Undersea Chant? Usually when we hear "animals" we think terrestrial but technically fish are animals too. If not that then it must've been an early Barnyard, testing the farm animal vocalizations before having the BBs do it for real. Could this be the lost Barnyard vocal track from December? Either way, UC or not, it's absolutely the same kind of idea. Anderle doesn't describe this as "hur hur, stoned Brian doing goofy things wasting time, wasn't he wacky?" as the PS/comedy naysayers would have us believe. Anderle seems to treat moments like this, Brian directing whoever was around in impromptu harmonies, as awe-inspiring examples of his genius rather than drug-addled procrastination. The cutlery symphony is independently attested to here as well, except now it's "about fifteen" people involved and Brian would sing/chant over it. It's implied by how Anderle tells the story this wasn't a one-off instance either, but a semi-regular occurrence. And, rather than dismiss these are the dumb misadventures of goofball Brian, David regrets not being more enthusiastic about them back in the day--he realized then but even more now how brilliant it was. To the poo-pooers from 2015--tell me again how this article is supposed to disprove my pro-PsychSounds theories? Seriously, it's like they didn't even read the article themselves...

PART TWO

12. Brian used the guys as instruments, they'd come into sessions not knowing what they'd record and Brian would, on the spot, teach them only their fragmented tasks of several disparate pieces of songs. So they'd have no idea what was going on, which obviously added to their confusion and subsequent resentment.

13. In the same tangent, Anderle says Brian starts off his albums with a general concept and goes from there. Im sure with Pet Sounds it was "express my teen angst" and "an album of all good stuff" while with SMiLE it was probably "teenage symphony to God" and "a humor album that makes people spiritually enlightened through laughter." (For some reason, VDP didn't get this memo or forgot or pretends not to have been told, because when describing the concept of SMiLE he always diverts to "Americans talking about America" or "the innocence America had lost" and themes to that effect. I'm curious why practically every other primary source describes SMiLE a certain way BUT the co-writer.)

14. In a throwaway line, Anderle mentions that the elusive Paul Jay Robbins was brought in around the same time he and Vosse were. Paul must really have been a wall-flower the way nobody mentions him except here. Like, Siegel mentions both Anderle and Vosse in his piece, Vosse mentions the other two, Anderle returns the favor...but Paul's totally forgotten except the very rare mention like this. Anyway, I'm wondering if he wasn't one of the dinner guests the night of the cutlery symphony if he was brought in around the same time as the others--if we take Siegel's 10 and Anderle's 15 figures as our low and high end estimates, he'd fill out the number rather nicely with those I mentioned before. Him and a girlfriend would make 12, just in between the two.

15. I think everyone knows the "they blew each others minds" quotes Anderle lays out if they know anything about this article. I have little to add except that Anderle makes the parting sound mutual rather than VDP hurting Brian by unilaterally departing as may be implied from other sources. I think quotes like this really point to there being some kind personality clash, a mutual creative difference, rather than a sudden break solely due to outside forces. Just my impression, I could easily be reading into things.

16. February is listed as the month VDP left for good, which I think we can chalk up to hazy memories--it's not that far off from March.

17. "Smile was going to be the culmination of all of Brian 's intellectual occupations; and he was really into the elements. He ran up to Big Sur for a week, just 'cause he wanted to get into that, up to the mountains, into the snow, down to the beach, out to the pool, out at night, running around, to water fountains, to a lot of water, the sky, the whole thing was this fantastic amount of awareness of his surroundings. So the obvious thing was to do something that would cover the physical surroundings. We were aware, he made us aware, of what fire was going to be, and what water was going to be ; we had some idea of air. That was where it stopped."

^The first part of this quote is partially why I justify things like grouping tracks according to balanced numerological values, using the "Vega-Tables" spelling of the track, or interpreting SU as heralding in the Age of Aquarius (which Brian must surely have been aware of as an astrologist--and it was a common rallying cry in the Sixties). Even if they didn't have songs specifically, unambiguously associated with them, I think these topics would've found their way onto SMiLE, if even in as limited a capacity as the zodiac on the back cover paired with 12 tracks (implying a superficial if not definitive correlation). It does sound like the trip to Big Sur in the summer is what inspired him to do an Elements track if he didn't necessarily have all the music composed in his head going into the sessions with VDP. But still, this really perplexes me, if he had the idea all ready from the beginning why were the other 2 pieces not among the recorded bits in '66? Why wouldn't Van talk about this in all his interviews, instead of ignoring the topic as much as possible and focusing almost entirely on the Americana angle? (Van does mention "innocence" but in relation to "the innocence America had lost" and he does admit Brian had yet to get all the "when I grow up to be a man" out of his system--but no word on the Elements except when pressed, and even then it's "I worked on Veggies but nothing else.")

^It's also really weird how Van and Frank Holmes take it as a given Veggies was an element, so their two would be Fire and Veggies, while here Anderle says Water and Fire. For this reason, I'm willing to concede Dada may well have been water just because it's the only possible fragment floating around from the same time this was all going on. And certainly--absolutely--there was some kind of Watery chant even from the very beginning, which morphed from Undersea Chant to Cool Cool Water to the Water Chant (as part of a larger CCW). I think, if we insist on trying to pin down all the elements, these three are very plausible candidates and the best answer we're gonna get. It's air that's the big question, and since WC' tag has been definitively ruled out as far as I'm concerned, I think that leaves the Breathing skit as a potential clue as well as (in order of plausibility) "Air Dada," IIGS and Country Air assuming it's anything we've heard at all or even anything recorded in the first place.

^I recall AGD mentioning he was told Elements would've been two variations of two melodies/compositions and in this context I think a Fire/IWBA-FN or Fire/Fall Breaks paired with Dada (as water and air) might suffice. I think to stray from these theories would require a very compelling argument, and persisting with the "WC (tag) is air" nonsense is just pure stubbornness at this point. On top of all the other evidence against it I've chronicled here, there's NO WAY Brian wouldn't have mentioned air was a finished song in the can to Anderle if they were discussing what air was going to be. Someone has to explain this massive discrepency. Why would air be a mystery Brian couldn't make Anderle aware of if it's just a piece of music WE KNOW HE DEMOED TO ANDERLE AND OTHERS A HUNDRED TIMES? (Vosse, recall, mentions how they begged him to play that acetate over and over and says they must've heard it a hundred times. C'mon guys, there's no way to reconcile WC as air with the evidence.)

18. Anderle independently corroborates the "lot of fires broke out" talking point--this is roughly contemporary with Siegel's article and Anderle openly disdained Siegel so I doubt he'd repeat this mantra if he didn't have independent reason to believe it. He even repeats the "Brian destroyed the tape" lie. So, if this talking point is actually BS and there weren't an inordinate number of fires that year, fair enough, but it's completely unfair to pin that solely on Siegel as I've seen people do in the EH forum. It seems everybody in Brian's camp believed this narrative, for whatever reason. (Maybe they over-emphasized fires on the news that year, it was a slow time for local news and they over-covered a single blaze to fill airtime and this gave everyone the wrong impression?)

^Either way, Anderle says this is when the Elements died...but he wasn't around when Brian dug out Dada, so I don't think we can 100% rule out that Dada wasn't an old Element fragment dug out of mothballs either. (I have no stake in Dada being an element or not--frankly I think quibbling over which melody was what element is a fool's errand and largely a waste of time. I just think the Nov 4 chants are demos or pieces of elements or at the very least Brian searching for inspiration--that's the only hill I'm willing to die on with regard to this sub-topic.)

19. The Elements breaking down is described as the first signs of trouble for SMiLE as a whole. This is pretty well accepted but I think it's worth mentioning Anderle corroborates it. But he also says at the same time Brian started getting pushback at the studios for touching the console and booking time when he wanted it. "Then there was a hassle between Van and Brian and Van wasn't around." I really think quotes like this hint at personal squabbles between Brian and VDP, clashes of personality, that have never been fully revealed due to neither man speaking on the record until years later, where they forgot or it was too petty to dredge up. Later Anderle circles back to this and says "the central thing" (with regards to the collapse) was VDP's severing of that relationship.

^Maybe now that Brian's gone and Van has nothing to lose we might get some juicy nuggets of personal drama in his autobiography. Not to sound rude but he has to know SMiLE is the reason half the people who get the book are even interested. (Then again, Grace Slick's terrible autobiography only devotes two-pages each to Monterey, Woodstock and Altamont so who fucking knows. Maybe he'll troll us and not even mention it purely out of spite.)

20. Brian is said to have stopped recording for awhile. I notice a two-week period of studio inactivity from March 15 to March 28, with a more significant retreat from April 14 until those infamous 3 Dada sessions on May 16-18. Anderle states Brian was looking for excuses not to work on it, that he shifted focus to talking about films, to suddenly taking an interest in BRI, he doesn't mention the Jasper Dailey tracks but I think they're borne out of the same issue.

21. There's an anecdote about Brian and Mike clashing over who'd sing lead on a certain song--which he doesn't name--and they wasted a week of studio time before Brian did it. I'm wondering if this isn't H&V and that accounts for the weird version on the boxset where Mike and Brian sing lead of different parts. It lines up on AGD's site with the band's return from Europe.

22. At this time, Anderle mentions how scary it must've been for the guys with all these new people around "saying things." He specifically mentions himself, Vosse, Jules, Van and "Paul Robbins somewhat." Like he even subtly implies there that Robbins was a lesser entity which I think is interesting.

23. He claims there are "3 albums worth of tracks" recorded for SMiLE in the vaults. That's a blatant exaggeration, even if you include every throwaway fragment. I'm among the biggest SMiLE fanatics of all time and I'd say at most there's an album and a half of material (~60 minutes), and a significant chunk of that (let's say ~15 minutes) is either snippets that make no sense by themselves and drag their song down (Heroes outtakes) or are just mediocre by SMiLE standards. (Holidays, Barnyard, He Gives Speeches, Tones, IDK.)  

24. Anderle mentions Brian having to get involved with lawyers and business stuff as a factor in the collapse. At first he says "Brian was told he had to have a single" before finally admitting he was the bearer of bad news. According to David, the lawsuit stuff killed the positive vibes--suddenly he (Anderle) couldn't hang out with Brian all night as it had been, since he'd have to do business in the daylight hours. Suddenly instead of getting high and doing fun things, David had to relay the minutes of meetings he and Nick Grillo had with Capitol. This led to Brian getting stressed, worried, uptight, thinking about unfun legalistic wranglings rather than creativity. I guess the people who downplay this aspect of SMiLE's collapse, like Vosse in his Fusion article or VDP in all his interviews, just weren't close enough to that aspect of the goings-on to see how it affected Brian. And really, the whole thing was a perfect storm where one less stressor is probably the difference between SMiLE coming out or not.

25. It's reiterated Heroes was chosen as the single because it was closest to completion--apparently Brian even told Paul Williams this in December, so it was known even then. But there was some discussion of other songs as possibilities too, there was a back and forth.

26. I'll admit the way Anderle talks about Smiley as "preserving as much of SMiLE as he could while directly going into the humor album" implies SMiLE and "the humor album" were separate things. I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge he says something that potentially challenges one of my theories. That said, I think he's wrong. So there.  

27. With regard to Derek Taylor, Anderle credits him with the successful English tour BUT he confirms my longheld theory that Taylor and Brian didn't like each other. Their relationship "nosedived" and they mutually agreed to sever ties. Like VDP, he's described as leaving, coming back then leaving again. "Brian always felt the BBs were number two with Derek and the Beatles were number one." Brian was right to feel that way, considering how Taylor's book focuses exclusively on his time with the Beatles and the quotes he supplied to that dumbass Sgt Pepper book I reviewed in this thread were wholly negative.

28. The Barroom Brawl is mentioned here for the first time.

29. Anderle goes on at length about how a bad event, like a fight with Murry (or presumably the Boys) could put Brian in such a dour mood he wouldn't be productive for days, weeks sometimes. This furthers the idea that a few low-stakes incidents (like the CE incident) that make us think "that was no big deal, just get on with it" could've really hurt him. BUT even more than that, Anderle calls attention to a factor that many of us seem to forget, myself included, that Murry was constantly clipping Brian's wings in the background. He was crapping on even GV (which shut any dissent within the BB the hell up, at least somewhat) so we can expect he probably didn't mince words on his thoughts for CIFOTM. He was there at least in one session, which implies he could've been at other SMiLE sessions too, no doubt making rude remarks all the time. I think constant browbeating from Murry finally took its toll around the SMiLE sessions--Brian might've brushed it off like he had in the past, but with everything else going on it was one stressor too many.

^This does make the several gaps in the sessionography start to make sense to me. Before I'd assumed either Brian couldn't get studio time booked or was taking some time to perfect arrangements anytime there was a gap of more than a few days in the calendar but now I wonder if these incidents aren't Brian nursing his wounds after a blowup with his dad or perhaps the other Beach Boys. "There is so much emotion, and drama, in that family, much more than I've ever seen in any other family, and everything directly affects Brian. Brian is always conscious of those boys, continually conscious of them, as brothers and as human beings. Very seldom as an act. Again, that's why, a great reason why Smile wasn't finished, the way Brian wanted it, because of their resistance in the studio."

30. I think Anderle's assessment of Mike Love is worth quoting in its entirety: "Mike Love? Businessman. Continually being accused by Brian of being mercenary, soulless-very untrue, Mike is a very soulful person. He's the only one really who is aware of business, for the group. At the same time Michael is the one who has opposed experimentation stronger than anyone else. He's the one more divorced of the family relationship in the group. Brian's opposite number, you know, he's the one who is continually fighting Brian, the hardest one for Brian to control, the hardest one for Brian to deal with and I've seen Mike send Brian right out of sessions, because Brian will get so frustrated in terms of trying to relate to Mike, and not being able to. Brian will just stomp right out, and there 's some more lost time, more lost creative time."

^In the SMiLE Era, Brian was getting fed up with Mike--saying he made too much money and was uncreative. Had Mike not been family, if it were Al being described here or Bruce, I really wonder if he wouldn't have been jettisoned. I think those who downplay the rift between Brian and Mike have taken things too far in the anti-Leaf direction. Quotes like this clearly show there were a lot of hurt feelings despite their familial love. Just because we don't have specific CE incident stories of dramatic blowups to point to doesn't mean there wasn't constant low-key fighting that "wore [Brian] down" as Marilyn has said too. It's ridiculous overkill to throw out the overwhelming consensus of sources, especially these the most contemporaneous and truthful, saying Mike made the sessions a lot more stressful than they needed to be.

31. I think, towards the end of the second part, what Anderle hypothesizes is going on in the BB world post-SS and WH underperforming is dead-on. That's the great tragedy of Brian and the Beach Boys I say, that the group tried to restrain Brian's creative instincts in order to be more financially successful and in the process killed both their critical and commercial appeal. There's more to it than that I know, but it's so clear talking to anyone outside the BBs (who have an incentive to downplay this) that Brian's dream was to be an independent producer and the fact that they shut it down is pretty awful. It's not how they acted during SMiLE, it's how they acted during Redwood and the SU album etc that makes me side towards David Leaf's perspective on the band. Although I think Leaf took things too far by not giving the group more of an opportunity to defend themselves.

PART THREE

32. The cynic in me might chide David for only realizing WH was cool when it became clear that the back to basic movement was getting picked up by Dylan and the Beatles too...but I get it. Some movies/music I like right away and never let go of, some it takes awhile to sink in. I'll admit I didn't like Smiley or Solar System or even Vertigo all that much at first, until it had time to sink in. And really, this is a microcosm of Brian's problem--he was always so far ahead that he didn't get credit as the pioneer he was until later and even then usually by an elect few (comparatively). Like, even in this forum, people would talk about how revolutionary Sgt Pepper was, but there's nothing on that album that Pet Sounds didn't pave the way for (and do better, I say) and if I'm missing anything, nobody could fill me in. I asked many times to those who scoffed at my uninformed youngster opinion "ok, enlighten me: what's there that I'm not hearing, what context would make this album's special genius resonate?" And I'd just get more dismissive condescension or "you had to be there" or "dude, it's THE BEATLES!" And here again, Brian paved the way for the back to basics movement but he was doing it in late 1967 when others took until mid-1968 (and some not until 1969). The problem is, and to his credit Jules Siegel got this if no one else did, Brian wasn't "hip" and so none of the record buying public saw him as a trend-setter. When he was ahead of the curve it was perceived as "look how out of step they are" where when Dylan or Lennon tried something different it was seen as "a bold new visionary direction!" Without hip cred, the Beach Boys would and did never get their due.

33. I think Anderle gives a good point on the second page of the article, that sometimes we expect too much of musicians and modern creatives where we always want them to keep growing and changing (and then people complain that their new era isn't as good as the past). Some artists, like he mentions Rembrandt, had a niche and did it well. Hitchcock was the suspense guy, Tarantino is the quirky action and snappy dialogue guy, Christopher Nolan is the weird-structure/non-chronological guy... Just let artists do their thing and tell the stories they want to in the way that makes sense to them. Not everyone is going to have as dramatic a shift as the blue period to the Cubist.

34. Also, same page, he mentions how the Vosse Posse hanging around, telling Brian he was a genius, the industry leader, bigger than the Beatles probably did more harm than good. The overwhelming image of Brian I get from all these sources, and Anderle in particular, is that Brian was a very simple-minded guy when it came to general life skills (like managing or relating to people, handling adult responsibilities, navigating the world) but he made up for it by being on an impossibly higher level creatively. It's like he was operating on a higher frequency than us, one ear tuned to the music of the spheres as one writer put it, with only one foot on planet earth. Anderle even says when discussing the new business, Brian's ideas were so childlike as to focus on anatomy pictures on the walls, meetings in the pool, making everyone eat healthy...instead of the revenue streams, tax havens, liability risks that a normal businessman might be more concerned with. I could definitely see the new pressures, the perceived new roles (you're not just making music now, you're setting the standard for the whole industry) really weighing on him where others might relish in it. It was too much real world consideration to handle.

35. The third part is by far the least interesting in terms of revelatory info on Brian and SMiLE. I thought so in 2015 and think so now. It does end on perhaps the biggest (and in some way most disappointing) reason SMiLE didn't get done--if Brian couldn't get something done immediately he'd lose interest. And that's what happened here, in some way there is no big, satisfying, universally understandable reason it didn't get done. No grand conspiracy from Mike to stage an argument before the cameras, nor hijack Taylor's press releases. No singular dramatic argument or bad acid trip we can pinpoint as the definitive moment it was all over. Brian just got bored, pure and simple. He probably had SMiLE the proto-WOIIFTM/USA album in his head somewhere and that was enough for him. The idea of getting bogged down for another 3-12 months (I don't necessarily believe him but he has said it would've taken a year in some interviews) fighting with the Boys' bad attitudes, tinkering with hours of tape to splice together the best comedic asides or hunting for specific notes to put together in a frankensteined water-recordings song, working with an increasingly uncool Wrecking Crew...all while the record company was yelling for product NOW and Murry was yelling to pull the plug NOW...it was too daunting to put himself through. We may not like it, and in hindsight it was the wrong call for the band's reputation (not to mention pop music as an artform) but it is what it is.

[MyDrKnowsItKeepsMeCalm]

Great stuff Julia, fascinating as always.

I've seen you mention a few times that the rest of the guys never fully understood what they were recording for Smile as it was recorded so piecemeal, and that that was a non-zero factor in their attitudes towards the material and process. I really agree with that.

A really interesting point of comparison are those Love You demos from 1976, where Brian is playing new-to-them Love You material like I'll Bet He's Nice for the guys. You can hear he starts off real nervous -- and then you hear in real time as he builds confidence and the guys start whooping and hollering as they get caught up in excitement. You have to feel like Brian leaves *that* meeting feeling better about the material than when he started, and feeling good that the BBs team was on board. I imagine there were few-if-any moments quite like that during the Smile process.

[Julia]

My copies of the Byron Preiss and Jon Stebbins books arrived a week earlier than posted! So, in the next couple of days, I'll commentate on them too! Then, I'm going to make a list of the big SMiLE mysteries or in-dispute points of fact (stuff like "when did Van join the project" or "what's the elements") and re-read my notes, putting in every source's answer to these questions or at least parsing out the overwhelming consensus. This way, it'll take all the info gleamed from this deep dive and present it in another, possibly simpler manner. (Or it may reveal how little I've learned and therefore how obscure SMiLE shall always remain!) Then I'll rank every source, as best I can ascertain, in terms of its accuracy and where possible, determine its specific journalistic flaw(s). (For instance, off the top of my head, I remember the Gaines book had a tendency to simplify multiple anecdotes into one or two incidents, presumably to make the narrative more concise and compelling. To his credit he does this well--the Gaines account is among my favorite versions of the story, I love the way he bookends it with Brian's two houses and includes lesser known stories like the chiropractor assault.)

And, to reiterate once again, I'll keep an eye out for a way to read those relevant ESQ issues (https://esquarterly.com/product-category/all-issues/smile/) without paying an arm and a leg, or if someone wants to go halvsies or something and we buy them together and shared pdf scans of each others...I'm willing to parse through that last (to my knowledge) significant source of potentially untapped info when I find a way.

Beyond that, if I've missed anything, any book/magazine/interview/podcast with important info that someone thinks ought to be weighed in on, let me know what it is and I'll do my best to track down a copy.

If anyone knows the legalese with regards to my sharing the Preiss book, Stebbins book and (most importantly) the BWPS concert booklet/tour program online somewhere, let me know what Im allowed to do or who I have to contact and I'll try to share them online, preferably on the Internet Archive's library. I want to make sure these sources are preserved, especially the last one because it's not a real book with a publishing house or explicit copyright info. It's a one-off piece of memorabilia from a 20-year-old tour that will NEVER happen again and will almost certainly never be republished...I don't think I'm depriving the estate of Brian Wilson or BRI any real revenue by sharing pictures of each page but I don't want to get in trouble either. Insiders used to post here, people who know insiders still do...anyone in a position to tell me how to handle preserving this document, let me know here or in PMs. I don't think it's fair I had to buy a copy just to see if there was any relevant info inside and I don't wish the experience on others, especially since my copy is the only one I could find at the time not going for hundreds of dollars.

[JK]

Hi Julia. I just discovered one of Lambert's books online. Maybe it's of some use to you.

Good Vibrations: Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys in Critical Perspective

https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/43888/9780472902385.pdf

[Julia]

This is my reaction to the info in the relevant sections of the Byron Preiss book.

Also, I caved and bought a single issue of ESQ to see if the rest might be worth the purchase someday. I went with issue #68 because it seems the most interesting of those not sold out that isn't over 30$ an issue. (It'd be nice if I could buy #67 without the CD of a song I already own and don't want, to shave down the $40 price tag but I digress). So that'll be a thing I end up looking at too, in the near future. I still think it'd be cool if anyone else were willing to buy at least one of the other issues in their SMiLE catalogue and summarize the info, if not for me than for the rest of us. Not trying to sound like a cheapskate here but I've already spent something like ~$100 in service of this project and these are uncertain economic times, with new SMiLE, Paley and "Brian's Back" sets on the horizon to get.   

1. Notes on the Byron Preiss Book

As I understand it, this is the second ever major book on the band after Leaf's original 1978 California Myth. I believe I have the good version with illustrations, and they are definitely a highlight. I also like the unique use of quotes separated from the main body of the text but peppered throughout the narrative. I only wish they were cited more frequently--sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't and it's inconsistent what gets the honor and what doesn't. Anything from GSHG is cited but Preiss doesn't even mention the writing of that article anywhere in his SMiLE narrative, so a newcomer would have no idea why these quotes are so significant; meanwhile the Crawdaddy and Fusion articles are not cited despite being as good or arguably better sources of info overall. I can recognize most of the major ones from my reading list already and I assume most of those I don't remember are new to the book--like the infamous "piano piece" quote that is, by far, the most frequently referenced passage from this text on the forums.

I confined myself to the "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" chapter for now--I'll probably read the rest eventually but I hope y'all can understand why I kept things direct for now. (I'm getting sick of reading about the same story over and over as it is.) If there's some earth-shattering insight into SMiLE beyond the 1966-67 chapter of the book, I'm sure someone will let me know.

I originally wrote these notes in order of page # but then later went back and grouped them by subject because it seemed to make more sense.

2. Pet Sounds Stuff

Mike gushes about Pet Sounds, there's more quotes of him singing its praises than any other BB and I don't know if that's because the others weren't as available to Preiss or Mike's covering his ass (maybe compensating after Leaf's depiction of him) or if it's totally genuine. Maybe it's a cynical move allying himself with what must've been understood by 1979 to be their best work or he sincerely came around or his '66 grumblings were actually overstated all along. Either way, it's worth taking note of. It's possible Mike really did love PS and even SMiLE the whole time but just has a certain personality others find abrasive, or he's 90% jazzed about something but can't help voicing his concerns about the last 10% and it rubs others the wrong way. (To be fair, this is often my experience with people--I like to share my thoughts on things passionately and in-depth; it seems to piss a lot of people off, though that's never been my intent and I don't know how else to express myself without losing my intended meaning. Maybe that's Mike's issue too?)

Tony Asher says it was "a great joy making music with him" but otherwise being around Brian was "a chore." I sometimes wonder what it'd be like if Asher were asked to write for SMiLE instead--would the project have collapsed faster or maybe he'd have been better at setting boundaries so the work actually gets done? I can't see Tony letting Brian pressure him into singing or doing improv skits--would that have killed the vibe or forced Brian to get serious and quit goofing off?

We get another source saying Let's Go Away For Awhile" was meant to have lyrics but they were cut. I used to think this was a baseless talking point, whose "source" was just a cycle of other internet factoids referencing each other but I was 100% wrong on that. I wish we could see/hear the rejected lyrics--I don't think they would've improved the piece but I'm curious.

3. More Brian Idiosyncrasies

When describing Brian's weird interests, especially the fitness kick, not only is there the usual "eat veggies" and "gym mats in the house," "meetings in the pool" and "play sports" but Preiss mentions "scheduled vitamin intake" which is the first I've seen of this specific detail ANYWHERE. I'm inclined to believe this was a bit of artistic license, the author getting carried away, filling out the anecdote with an extra detail without a second thought. (Like, he hears "Brian was really into health" and absent-mindedly fills in the blanks of what he perceives that to mean, not knowing or caring that 50 years later an obsessed nerd would be agonizing over these details. Because to most people this is just half-interesting bit of fluff to fill out the story, a little piece of trivia to share with friends over coffee, not a sort of quasi-religion where each specific is a point of pseudo-doctrine.) Anyway, these things happen, information sharing is always a game of telephone, it's my self-appointed hobby at the moment to try to suss it out.

Similarly, Daro apparently suggested a clothing store that only sells robes, which enamored Brian at least for a hot minute. This anecdote feels vaguely familiar, maybe there was a line in the Badman book or something, but it's definitely a particularly obscure factoid about the SMiLE era either way. If it's true, it's another instance of Daro getting in the way and filling Brian's head with a lot of unhelpful ideas. Makes me wonder if it didn't influence Brian's other weird passing business venture ideas, like the all night telescope and ping pong stores, what ultimately became the Radiant Radish.

Brian supposedly designed the Arabian tent himself but didn't like it and went in "maybe two times" according to Vosse. 

4. The Infamous Air Quote (& Why It Isn't Wind Chimes)

The well-worn quote about Air as an unfinished piano instrumental cut is not expanded upon but I think we can infer a lot with context clues (which my rhetorical/debate opponents always conveniently leave out when using it to "prove" their WC=Air theory). Immediately after this line, which is a "disembodied quote" separate from the main text, Preiss describes the other 3 elements by name in the body paragraphs. He specifically mentions Mrs O'Leary's Cow, Veggies and later on Dada unambiguously. I repeat: by name, with no room for doubt, he says "X was Earth/Fire/Water." You know what song he doesn't mention at all? AT ALL? That's right--Wind Chimes. Why would he do that, it's such a massive omission in this case, and it's not like WC was some obscure fragment (ala He Gives Speeches, I Dont Know, IWBA, All Day, or even the Nov 4 demos everyone's predisposed to ignore). WC was a major song, on the Dec tracklist, with 3 versions including a contemporary official release on SS, and arguably the first SMiLE song. It's a known entity, something that would've been on both men's radar in this conversation, yet the connection is never made. Hmmm...

I submit that if Brian was talking about WC tag, this would've been sorted out in the interview process, and how could it not be? Even if Brian refused to elaborate beyond the vague quote, if Preiss had reason to believe he was referring to the WC tag, I'll wager any amount of money he would've said as much--either by pressing Brian ("you mean WC?") or openly speculating in the text ("this may be referring to WC but Brian couldn't/wouldn't elaborate"). How could a SMiLE author leave that last tantalizing element unaccounted for unless there really was no definitive answer, or the piano cut in question had no name? It's the equivalent of Brian sharing a clue about SU part 2 and not asking a follow-up--journalistic malpractice. Brian didn't give any more info because there was no more to give--it was a nameless piano melody (that may not have even been recorded for all we know, or is on one of the lost tape reels) unrelated to the more recognizable tracks he would've name-dropped if he could. It may not be an elegant answer that wraps everything up in a neat little bow with no hanging tangents...but such is SMiLE. Hell, such is LIFE.

To go through all the trouble of publishing a book, devoting YEARS of time and effort, wanting your book to be an important best-seller with revelations people will pay for, to not press for more info (if there was any) or make a seemingly obvious connection...it just strains credibility. Under different circumstances, I might be willing to tolerate some forced argument that "Brian/Preiss forgot to connect the dots" or "they thought it was so obvious they didn't need to spell it out" IF there wasn't a mountain of evidence against this stupid forced theory by now. (Even then, it'd be a huge stretch.) But since this is just the latest in a long line of strong, altogether undeniable evidence this isn't the case, yeah I say again WC wasn't air. Like, I'm sorry to spoil the fun of parroting the least interesting theory of what air was for the millionth time, to quash the endlessly recurring dialogue of "Preiss said piano piece"/"hey, WC tag is a piano piece!" before it can enter its umpteenth iteration, but really, not every theory needs to continue indefinitely.

To just finish this off once and for all, I ask any final stragglers--where's your proof to the contrary? All I can see in favor of your theory is: "Wind" in the title (coincidental--that's like saying CIFOTM is water because the baby's crying, or CE is fire because trains use combustion), this quote (which was hardly proof of anything to begin with and in context actually discounts the idea), Priore/bootlegs using it as such (they were desperate to fill a well-publicized conceptual hole and using the only thing they had access to that sorta kinda fit if you squint hard enough) and its use on BWPS (ditto--and there are unambiguous quotes of Brian/Darian admitting as much). It's a weak case propped up by tradition alone, championed by people who often argue in bad faith, using books like this and LLVS which they probably never even read solely to gatekeep dissent. It only ever had support due to peer pressure and convenience, not a thorough unbiased investigation of ALL the facts/testimony. It's such a ridiculous, unimaginative theory that even the author of Glimpses threw in a line making fun of it. This is a very intuitive reading of the situation, if I say so myself, and I don't see how the matter could be any more settled. Again, at this point, any holdouts are just being deliberately obtuse, bad faith debaters I say.

Again, I know I'm coming off as a petty, pedantic asshole about it, especially to those who weren't privy to some of the browbeating I endured on this issue years ago. But, I really hate how this stupid quote was always used as a "gotcha!" in element discussions, when it was always weak evidence even outside the context. Now that I've seen how Preiss goes out of his way NOT to include WC as part of this conversation, how he deliberately avoids connecting those dots, I can't help but feel a combination of vindication with frustration. This is why I wanted to embark on this deep dive in the first place, beyond my autistic obsession--I think the conversation of what SMiLE was has been hamstrung by these half-remembered, poorly-understood, out-of-context quotes cherry-picked and thrown around in bad faith. It's WAY passed time we looked at things more comprehensively, without nostalgic bias, willing to accept unexciting or ambiguous answers, crafting theories from the bottom-up based on the evidence, keeping a public record of which sources say what and weighing them by accuracy or, where that cannot be determined, against the consensus. That's what I'm trying to accomplish here.

(I'm not comfortable nor do I have the time to scan this entire book for internet reference but if anyone doubts me on this particular point, I'll take pictures of the relevant passages and embed them here, so eager am I to kill this theory once and for all.)

5. The Infamous Air Quote (& Other Candidates + Element Theories)

As for what I think Preiss/Brian were talking about here... obviously it wasn't WC or that connection would've been made. I think all exploring this topic in good faith can agree by this point. By the same logic, it would appear IIGS is out because they don't connect that to the quote either, and it isn't an instrumental. Dada is explicitly connected with water in this source. So...Country Air? I never liked this theory before, but it may be more likely than I ever thought. Brian was clearly playing around with unused SMiLE odds and ends during the Wild Honey era (solo SU, reworked Dada into CCW, reworked WC into CWTL) so it isn't a stretch to think that a then-unrecorded piano melody he had in mind for air might've finally got its due. Sure, CA isn't an instrumental either but maybe those lyrics were a new addition. (They are very sparse and simple, almost like a last minute add-on.) CA is very similar to IIGS in my opinion: with the rooster crowing (farm animals, morning--like when you'd eat eggs and grits), the country/agriculture setting, the lyrics about fresh air... I say CA is a reworked IIGS in the same vein as CCW and CWTL. I used to be very resistant to the idea of either song as Air, for what it's worth, but I'm slowly coming around to it.

If anyone were to say "hey, Brian doesn't connect the dots to say it was CA or IIGS either, so you're being inconsistent" I submit the following counters. First, I still don't know if I even trust this quote's accuracy at all but I'm accepting it for the sake of argument. (Brian says a lot of stuff he doesn't mean to make people happy or end the conversation, especially where SMiLE is concerned. Practically every song he ever wrote starts as a piano piece, and so any song that wasn't finished is by definition "an unfinished piano piece.) Second, it could stand to reason that if IIGS was significantly reworked into CA that Brian wouldn't connect the two in his mind anymore by '79, or care enough to clarify. So if Preiss asked about IIGS specifically, Brian wouldn't care enough to chronicle the complete evolution of the song. (Again, that's very Brian.) Third, it could be that he forgot CA exists (it's a brief, relatively unimpressive song in his catalogue made at a time he wasn't mentally all-there, from an under-selling album that he barely ever talks about and probably doesn't remember well). Fourth, being a WH track, it's possible Brian just doesn't mentally categorize CA as SMiLE-related anymore, similar to how he rejected using CCW in BWPS even though it's clearly the final evolution of Dada and much more explicitly water-related. Fifth, Brian gives unilluminating one-sentence answers unless pressed--it's what he does. I strongly suspect that in order to "know" Veggies was Earth and Dada was water, Preiss had to ask him specifically "Brian, was X the Y element?" / "W was the Z element, wasn't it?" I also think there's not a chance in hell, especially with the word "wind" in the name Preiss didn't ask the same thing here "WC must've been air, right?" only for Brian to give the quote we see in the book. (Essentially "nah, it was this unfinished piano piece.") Since Preiss isn't an uber-nerd with access to all the material and years to suss out all the theories like us, it didn't occur to him to specifically ask "so was this other song from WH air, then?"

Anyway, as for the Nov 4 PsychSounds chants in this new context...I still think they're elements demos, but it's Brian trying to see if he couldn't fit vocalizations onto it in some way. The "oooh" scat in Fire, maybe some kinda Veggie chanting or the fight over Workshop, something akin to Undersea Chant over perhaps Dada, and labored breathing over IIGS/CA. (Or, these vocal pieces would bookend the otherwise discordant pieces of music, smoothing the transitions of what would otherwise likely be a mess.) To anyone who'd say "but why didn't Brian/Preiss mention these demos in the book?" I counter that Preiss didn't know they existed in order to ask and Brian is not the type to offer specific info unless pressed. Had these pieces been booted in Preiss' time, I'm willing to bet they'd be mentioned in the narrative and we'd get a Brian quote explaining or dismissing them. But just because Preiss wasn't given unfettered access to the vaults and Brian's a bad interviewee doesn't mean these recordings didn't mean something in '66, if only for a day/week/month. Furthermore, if anyone's gonna dismiss this theory by saying "oh but that wouldn't even sound good!" ...you might be right. Remember this is an idea Brian abandoned, probably with reason. Obviously he couldn't get it all to work, or didn't think it was worth the effort after a certain point. That doesn't mean this isn't still a very (the most?) plausible theory of what happened, of what the elements would've been in '66. I challenge anyone to offer a more satisfying theory with the pieces and evidence we have, because I'd love to see a better Elements. 

The final piece of the puzzle is IIGS' lost reel shared a master # with Cornucopia Veggies. Coincidence? I'm thinking maybe not. I'm starting to think Elements wasn't more explicitly Americana than we thought, with names like MOLC & In Blue Hawaii tying two of the sections to specific American locales while the other two (Veggies and IIGS/CA) weren't part of the rustic pastoral lifestyle vibe seen in Barnyard and arguably CE. Rather than a disparate "third movement," a weird discordant suite of four unrelated and tonally inconsistent songs, Elements was just another piece of the American history/nature puzzle that encompassed not 1/3 or even 1/2 but rather the entirety of SMiLE. At least, that may've been the plan at one point, then Brian decided Veggies was too "complete" on its own to be part of such a medley, that Elements should be purely instrumental (with only chanting or vocalizations, no lyrics) and that plus the Fire paranoia killed the plan. Then "candle Fire" Fall Breaks and standalone Veggies got released on Smiley while standalone Dada/CCW and newly-reworked CA were intended for WH. This...makes sense to me. I'm going to call the Elements mystery more or less solved unless anyone else presents a more compelling argument to the contrary.

6. Dada and Water

It takes awhile for Preiss to mention Dada when discussing the elements, so when first reading I was expecting he was unfamiliar with that particular piece since it isn't on the tracklist or discussed in the '66-contemporary interviews. I was increasingly convinced we'd had it wrong all along and Dada/All Day was intended to be air while the Undersea/Water Chants alone were water. I'm still somewhat convinced of this opinion even after Preiss brings Dada in as the water element a few paragraphs later--it's at least very plausible and certainly the second most compelling way to tie the pieces together after my earlier theory. (For reasons I'll bring up as they come, I don't particularly trust Preiss as a source.) One such instance of Preiss' questionable authority occurs as part of this anecdote, where he claims out of nowhere that SU was part of a "water suite" within the larger "elements suite." Again, I've NEVER heard this from anyone else (except a certain board member who wasn't even familiar with this Preiss quote) and it just doesn't click--there's nothing watery about SU except the coincidental name, same as with WC. I'm not saying Dada or whatever water was couldn't have come before SU on the album--in fact that may've been a clever musical pun, making the listener anticipate the next track would be the usual BB "fun in the sun" fair, but it's not an element. I think Preiss was letting his own speculation out of control in this instance. (Some may accuse me of the same, but no one could deny I back my theories up.)

Dada is specifically said to have voices and sound effects intended for its final mix. Again, I'm spotty on Preiss as a source by now but this does jive with my intuition and other accounts. Remember Brian says on "All Day" (which is either a proto-Dada or brief attempt to merge it into Heroes) he wanted a lot of talking in the pauses. Plus there's the Vosse water recordings, which are mentioned in this book in this context, and elsewhere. Brian's whole shtick at this point was purposefully selected arrangements to make the listener see the subject matter, and what better instrument to illustrate water than water itself? After all, Fire had actual fire crackling noises overdubbed in some takes, Veggies had actual veggie crunching for percussion--although not by Paul McCartney. (And, to absolutely drive the point home, another problem I have with the piano quote for air is...how is a piano airy? A truly bisociative composition for air ought to be like woodwinds or something air blows through to make the sound, right? Brass, an organ, a harmonica? Pianos, where the string is pounded, are among the least airy instruments I could think of next to a drum. It just totally goes against Brian's MO during this period, a compositional philosophy he followed so strongly that he rerecorded perfectly fine arrangements if they didn't evoke the image clearly enough.) 

However, Preiss claims Brian sent Vosse out to get them in June which is completely 100% bullshit. It can't be June '66 because by his own admission Vosse wasn't part of the scene until late September or early October, to say nothing of the fact that Elements couldn't have been written then. It can't be June '67 because Vosse was gone by March and so was SMiLE. (Also, by now I should mention, Vosse is continuously misspelled "Vossi" in the book.) Preiss clearly had access to the Fusion article because he quotes from it in places (uncited, unless I'm going crazy) so it's strange he ignores the man's own timeline of events for no discernible reason. And I personally put V-Fusion as the #1 single most reliable primary account so to contradict it requires a hell of a convincing body of evidence which Preiss just doesn't provide.

7. The Engineers Weigh In

Chuck Britz says on page 53 that Brian would record a song/section over again if anyone criticized it, even if they didn't know what they were talking about. ("People would say things they had no right to say...") If not for the more compelling theory of mine regarding the various versions of Wonderful, Wind Chimes, CIFOTM (where discarded takes weren't bisociative/pictorial enough, or the context for the song changed requiring a new arrangement to remain impressionistic) I'd suggest this may've been what happened with those. This is definitely the tendency of Brian's that helped stall progress and require endlessly reworking what was already perfect, it may've been what helped lead to the Heroes sessions. I wonder if perhaps members of the Posse weren't guilty of offering unsolicited and unhelpful advice like this? Perhaps that's part of why Brian ultimately cut them all out? In any case, it definitely adds fuel to the idea Brian was too sensitive for his own good, too much a people pleaser, too willing to silence his muse if it meant keeping everyone happy or chasing universal validation.

Jim Lockhart (misspelled Lackert?) says the group would sometimes want to try things a different way other than Brian's and they'd do that first, then come back around to his first suggestion. This also apparently wasted time.

8. Derek Taylor / Frank Holmes and Cover Art Stuff

Page 56, Derek Taylor mentions Brian admitting the band had neglected artwork and press jockeying for too long. This was a throwaway line in the disowned WIBN book, I'm glad to see it referenced in a better source. So, Brian was aware the BB covers were mostly sh*t and the SMiLE shop was his first time taking an interest in such things. Is it a coincidence then that the next 3 albums after that also have arguably the best looking sleeves of any BB albums? SS/WH/Friends after Christmas/Today!/PS is night and day for me. The Beatles took more of an active interest in such things and it showed--from With the Beatles on, all their sleeves are iconic, gorgeous works of pop art in their own right. Sgt Pepper is arguably the single most beautifully crafted photograph of all time, regardless of how overrated the music.

Apparently we got the 12 page booklet because the lawsuit granted Brian leverage to demand such a thing. I never saw this detail before but I can believe it. I always thought it was weird Capitol would do such a thing, especially because this would've been the first of such extras in a rock album to the best of my knowledge. And how much cooler is this than the dumb cardboard cutout mustaches from Sgt Pepper by the way?

Frank Holmes is said to have "sent out" the cover in December, at least it's implied since his delivering of the art is discussed alongside the December tracklist and advertising blitz by Capitol around the same time. Since Preiss has gotten dates wildly wrong elsewhere, I'm inclined to go with October for the cover's completion, as other sources say. Unless I see otherwise, I'm convinced he was hired in August or perhaps very early September, then delivered his work sometime in October. Whether the arrival of that cheery smile shop image inspired the name change from Dumb Angel or not, I'm inclined to believe it convinced Brian to be more explicit with the humor than perhaps he'd first intended. Now instead of just silly titles and lyrical wordplay (or musical shenanigans, like the soft verse of WC into the loud chorus) he opted for some spoken word comedy and laughter.

9. Vosse Posse Stuff (The Most You'll Ever Hear of Paul Jay Robbins)

We get June 1966 as when Brian and VDP met and it's implied when they began working. Again, I'm sticking with the earlier consensus of late August, probably after the WC track was recorded. (I think this is only time where Van wrote words to a pre-recorded song, with the rest written together, but that's just my intuitive speculation.)

Siegel was sent by the Saturday Evening Post directly, who were independently eager to see what Brian was up to after PS & GV, similar to Oppenheim from CBS. So, Siegel was arguably the only person in the scene not brought in directly by VDP, Anderle or a family member. He wasn't in the friend group, hence everyone singling him out as someone who didn't fit in socially. It seems like Siegel himself wanted to be cool and accepted, he wanted this to be more than a work assignment, he thought he was Brian's friend. I think his obsession with hipness was projected onto Brian in the GSHG article. I feel bad for the guy and think he was done dirty by the others--nothing in his article seemed a lie, certainly not big enough to warrant Anderle's accusations (unless he was planning to include something we don't know and got shut down). He sounds kind of annoying on the Lifeboat tape but no more than most of them do there and on the Nov 4 demos.

On page 58 we get a rare mention of Paul Jay Robbins, who apparently was brought into the scene by Anderle. (First direct mention I've seen of where he came from. Is it because he wasn't offered a job like Vosse and Anderle that he gets so overlooked? Was he not offered because he was inadequate or there wasn't anything else for him to do?)

This is the first I've seen of Brian sending Vosse and Anderle to represent the BB organization at an LA protest against the 11 pm curfew. Apparently Paul Jay Robbins got hit in the head--he isn't mentioned as being sent by Brian, so was he there independently? (Also, when mentioning this incident, Preiss takes the time to refer to him as "Van Dyke's friend.") A quick Google search reveals this protest, called a riot in some sources, occurred on November 12, then the next night "and on and off throughout November and December." I'm going to assume 11/12 was when PJR got hit because that seems the biggest night of activity. This raises SO MANY QUESTIONS and I'm legitimately shocked it's never mentioned in any other source, assuming it's true. You'd think Vosse or Anderle, one of them, would mention that Brian sent them to a protest where a member of the Posse got hurt. They usually mention PJR once if at all and always in passing, never anything notable he did. The poor mysterious guy, I thought, must've been a quiet wallflower type who did nothing of note in order to be so overlooked. But here he is (allegedly) taking a baton or fist to the skull in the fight for freedom and they never mention it. Assuming this is all accurate info, why in the hell is this brushed over? Also, couldn't the fact that there were riots going on in the city Brian lived in during the crucial Nov - Jan period have something to do with his increasing sense of "bad vibrations" and paranoia? So why isn't this potentially contributing factor to his negative headspace ever considered?

10. Brother Records Future Projects

We get specific mentions of a health food album and "musical movies" as the envisioned projects of BRI for the then-near future. Usually you hear about this so-called "humor album" (which I'm skeptical was ever truly a separate project from SMiLE) or rarely a "sound effects album" (ditto) but this is the first I recall of a "health food album." I've seen the musical movies idea before and it makes me want to cry imagining what Brian could've done if he hadn't completely broke down the way he did. The man could've made a new Fantasia in reverse--coming at it from a musical background as opposed to animation--and probably done it better than Disney himself. (Huge Walt Disney fan, love what Fantasia was going for, but I think the execution was sadly lacking. The idea is brilliant though and I think Brian teamed with a bold, psychedelic-inclined, indie director might've made it happen.) It need not be animated either--just imagine a short film of interrelated music videos with avant garde visual language, each standing on its own but adding up to a greater whole. They would've absolutely been pioneers, DECADES ahead of their time--MTV in the cinema, before Michael Jackson, a-ha or Peter Gabriel had a chance to make the music video an artform all its own in the 80s. What a tragic waste.

While it's too late for them to be the ones leading the pack on this, I still think an animated film about SMiLE could be a huge success with the right directors/studio and a non-BWPS/TSS presentation of the music. Imagine a thoughtfully composed two-suite mix like one of the 17 I've suggested in this thread, paired with surreal impressionist imagery. Like, Frank Holmes meets Yellow Submarine meets The Wall meets Spider-verse. There's minimal or even no story, just trippy imagery illustrating the songs in a metaphorical way, each track having its own art style but only moderately removed from what came before, so the pictures flow as well as the music. By the end, we've gone from one style to a radically removed one. Don't worry about character or even narrative continuity--like Wonderful could show pictures depicting a modern little girl on the playground, a traditionally animated Disney princess and her woodland friends, a personified Columbia met by the ruthless settlers, Pocahontas going to England...all simultaneously to reflect the infinite possibilities of VDP's oblique words. Mix 2D and 3D, let the colors depict feelings not necessarily realism, pay homage to the likes of Cubism, Pointilism, Futurism, watercolor and Renaissance frescoes. It could be a masterpiece in the right hands.

11. Barnyard Suite Info and Theory

On page 59 we are told the Barnyard Suite (which is, I suspect, IIGS on the Dec tracklist) would've been "4 songs, 4 short pieces" combined into one. So, it would've been a direct counterpoint to the Elements as that track was originally conceived. I think we can therefore assume that BYS and TE would've been split between the sides, although there's no direct proof. But it just kinda makes sense that way, doesn't it, like how PS' two instrumentals were split up? I imagine a BYS bookended by Heroes, Worms, OMP, CE and maybe Veggies (?) paired against a TE suite bookended by GV, WC, Wonderful (?), CIFOTM and SU. This might be the most plausible grouping for SMiLE there is, possibly switching Wonderful and Veggies. (So the former can come after Worms' similar sounding outro as a metaphor for the rape of Columbia/the Native American Princess (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_princess) and the latter can serve as the Earth element.)

My theory with regard to BYS' internal structure is as follows:

1) I think Vosse's description in Fusion is probably accurate to how it was somewhere along the way, but not at the very start. It seems like My Only Sunshine was part of the earliest Heroes, and Brian's goal with the entire project of SMiLE was to take old standards like that (and later Cece Rider, Gee, OMP, etc) to recontextualize them in medleys of his own music. This was Brian's way of celebrating Americana where Van was more overtly historical. Then Heroes got its own lyrics, of which I think Barnyard-proper and IIGS were included in that first brainstorm (or not far behind), but Brian could never settle on how exactly they'd fit in a song about cowboys in the southwest. Because really, there's no farms in the southwest deserts and ranches.

2) Then the Western motif took off to include all the parts that would become CE and Worms, but where for example HotR/IH/GCD naturally fit into a single track, BY & IIGS still didn't completely gel anywhere. As I've said, Brian made several pieces too many and these were the ones left standing in the game of musical chairs. So, the idea of a Barnyard suite became an elegant solution to use all these would-be leftovers in one medley. Where the other pieces became choruses, bridges, verses or fades, these two bits would be half of a four segment suite with no repeating sections. When Vosse heard it, that meant Barnyard, OMP's two sections (taken out of Heroes as that became its own song), then IIGS and/or the workshop noises. I'm guessing this was how BYS existed circa November sometime. 

3) I suspect eventually Brian decided OMP with a fade worked better as its own thing (hence the parentheses crossed out on the Dec tracklist--this was a last minute decision to make it a standalone rather than subtitle in a larger song). Meanwhile the rest of BYS was now officially titled IIGS because Brian just liked that name better--I guess it'd emphasize the fitness and feel good vibes he was going for on the album as a whole. And this would've comprised of some combo of IIGS, IWBA, FN(WS) and BY. That's what the mysterious IIGS listing on the Dec tracklist was, but Brian never got around to assembling these pieces in a final edit.

It's no coincidence the two bloated 4-part medleys were the least finished and seemingly the least enthusiastic parts of SMiLE. Ultimately, I think Brian (and listeners) realized the Element pieces worked better as fleshed out independent tracks and the Barnyard suite worked best on the cutting room floor. (It was included on BWPS/TSS Disc 1 because the bootlegs made it too iconic to cut, and even then it's a mess of speed-bump fragments that ruins the flow--if free from built-up audience expectations and guided by his best instincts, I say Brian would've eventually cut this song, both in '66 and '03.) SMiLE needs at least one major cut to come in at an acceptable album length for 1967, and personally I can think of no worthier candidate than IIGS/BYS with OMP coming in second. Nothing else is on that same level of comparative mediocrity (not the right word but you get it--compared to the likes of SU and CE, these pieces just aren't on the same level). If they were stronger ingredients they wouldn't've had to be mashed together in one awkward lump to begin with. 

12. Smiles and Frowns

On pages 59 and 60 we get the obligatory mention of Brian's interpretation of humor as a spiritual thing. This, though, is the first I've heard of laughter's supposed intent to disarm any accusations of pretentiousness. According to Preiss, Brian was worried people might think he was getting too serious, that this new direction might turn people off, unless he could show them it's just as fun as the old stuff. I've never heard it from this angle before but it makes sense.

On page 62, Diane says SMiLE was "not a real comfortable time." I wonder if she means all of it or just the "breakup period" from December onward. If she were asked this question on Nov 1, would she reflect the positivity that early period seems to embody or was there a darkness even then we didn't see? So many of these "new" (to me) disembodied quotes are frustratingly vague. Uncomfortable how? For whom, Brian or everyone? Was Brian having a ball (until he wasn't) but at everyone else's expense as I sometimes suspect? If this quote was new to Preiss, he got it out of Diane, how can you not ask like a half-dozen follow-ups? 

Mike and Al have quotes distancing themselves from SMiLE, saying words to the effect of "I was at home" and "I wasn't involved conceptually in that time." Everyone knows Mike's role in the story, and dissent is often said to have come from the group as a whole but the exact positions of the other individual members aren't delineated. (Except Dennis who's unambiguously positive, sans a few bizarre quotes to the contrary from Brian from decades later.) Anyway, I think we can put Al in the "SMiLE-skeptic" crowd with quotes like these plus his relative absence in the non-vocal sessions. At best, he was ambivalent at a time when Brian needed unwavering support most of all. (If Al wasn't "on Mike's side" complaining about the album/process then I don't know who was, because Dennis has enough evidence to "exonerate him" and people get upset if I suggest Carl wasn't fully supportive--plus he's most frequently utilized among the Boys in non-vocal sessions.)

13. Random Info

Preiss specifically, independently singles out October as the height of the sessions too.

Another notable inaccuracy: Preiss lists CE separately from Iron Horse and "(Have You Seen) the Grand Coulee Dam." This isn't just listing IH, GCD and Home on the Range as separate, which I could understand. Plus this is the only time I've ever seen that subtitle in the parenthesis on GCD.

There's a Mike quote that claims the concept of Teeter Totter Love (if not all the lyrics) was Jasper Dailey's own idea. He thought using a teeter totter as a metaphor for the battle of the sexes would be a cool idea. It seems like Brian took Jasper's own pitch and surprised him by fleshing it out into an entire song for him to sing. If SMiLE had been finished this would've been an interesting, fun bit of trivia for us fans, a cool victory lap story of the master burning off excess steam. Instead it's a frustrating tangent we wish wouldn't have happened. Even if writing a song from the guy's own idea is kinda cute, doing two more tracks (wasting like ~4 sessions and God knows how much time composing) was absolutely ridiculous overkill. I have to imagine even Jasper must've thought "uhh Brian, is this really the best use of your time?" I'd love to be able to read the minds of him and the sessions musicians during these pointless excursions. 

On page 63, there's a throwaway line about Brian being approached to do car jingles, which he didn't appreciate. It just goes to show he was so in-demand that everyone wanted to use him on their musical projects, even if it was beneath him. (He could've given them the bouncy backing track to TTL for an extra chunk of change if he had the mental wherewithal and let someone else write the lyrics. Could've thrown Asher a bone if he wanted to, in that regard, but I wonder if Brian couldn't sense Tony's disdain hence washing his hands of him after.)

Spector's quote on page 64 is the nicest thing I've ever seen him say about Brian and it's dead-on accurate. Essentially, by making GV he was put in a position where he wasn't just making music anymore, he was leading an entire industry which meant all eyes were on him and as a shy sensitive person that's a lot of pressure. It was a trap he walked himself into.

14. Brian's Acid Intake

Carl says Brian took a lot of LSD in a short period and then stopped completely. How much is "a lot" how long is "a short period" and when was this exactly? We don't know. Honestly, even though it contradicts the consensus of ~3 trips over maybe 6 months to a year or so (mid '65 through mid '66), I could buy this. I don't believe the other "heterodox" takes on Brian's acid intake, like Taylor's dismissive quote or Leaf's 78 book claiming he took a lot in Spring '67 to soothe the pain. Those feel like anti-drug, scapegoat-seeking, "hurr hurr acid is funny" exaggerations. But taking too much acid in a short period of time (say once a week or every two weeks over a 2~3 month window perhaps) would actually explain the dramatic, sudden, permanent personality shift into a moody, erratic, avoidant person unable to take care of himself. Mike says Brian's personality completely changed suddenly and he was never the same after. That's what happened to Syd Barrett the other famous "acid casualty." And the people who actually crash out on acid, it's almost always 1) latent mental illness, 2) over-doing it especially in too tight a window or 3) both. While this throws an otherwise settled matter back into the throws of the unknown, I don't think we should dismiss Carl's quote out of hand. The question then becomes: when did this period of acid consumption take place--November '66 through May '67 or some smaller time-frame within that half-year or thereabouts? Maybe trying to find his muse again as the original conception of SMiLE slipped away, which eventually led to its refounding as Smiley? Maybe it was at the very beginning of the sessions actually, like August-October, which had him feeling great at the time but contributed to the perceived downfall starting in November? (By the way, poor Tobelman, because if true this further erodes his theory's already strained-at-best credibility.)

15. Inside Pop Info

There's NO MENTION of Mike staging a fight for the cameras, and the "went very badly" (which isn't mentioned explicitly but Preiss discusses a prior attempt to film the sessions before Brian's solo SU) is just that the BB vocal session was too fragmented to be palatable to general audiences. This makes perfect sense, first of all, since so much of TSS is short snippets that aren't particularly impressive on their own. (Imagine if they just aired 4 minutes of "Bridge to Indians" or "Wonderful Insert" or "Do a Lot" sessions for Inside Pop--ooh, that'd set America on fire, right?) And beyond that, if there was a fight I highly doubt Oppenheim wouldn't have mentioned it since his assessment of Brian in the Gaines book was brutally honest and unflattering. I doubt his crew wouldn't run away with that hot story sometime in all these decades. I doubt Brian, when in the mood to throw shade during the 80s and BWPS era wouldn't have mentioned it as a point of contention. I doubt Mike hater in chief, David Leaf, or literally any other source besides the discredited Priore, wouldn't have uncovered that juicy story and shouted it to the heavens by now--if it actually happened. (Which it didn't, Priore's a liar.)

On the second attempt, apparently Oppenheim tried to interview Brian about the state of the industry, music in general, the counterculture, but Brian was too shy to give him anything usable. Then they had trouble getting him relaxed enough to play, it took a lot of coaxing from the Posse. There were apparently many false starts before he finally did the whole song. All of this info is new to me (assuming true). Every other source gave the impression Brian was more or less at ease with Opp or at least not terribly nervous around him. At least until after the exuberant praise paradoxically made him doubt the music. This does make sense with his famous shyness and growing paranoia, so I'm not inclined to write it off but I think it's notable how other sources don't paint the same picture.

16. Preiss' SMiLE Mix

Preiss sort of gives his own hypothetical SMiLE assembly but it's presented as a throwaway, not the carefully crafted attempt at a definitive mix, ala Priore. (Worms, BYS, CE, OMP, [Iron Horse, Grand Coulee Dam], Bicycle Rider, Heroes // GV, Elements, Veggies, SU, CIFOTM). The brackets around two consecutive pieces of CE are my own addition and, again, that they're separated from a standalone CE makes me think Preiss doesn't really understand the material. Still, he mostly got the groupings down to what seems the most popular format, which is Americana Side 1, Elements/GV/SU(+ CIFOTM and/or Wonderful) Side 2. There's something natural about those groupings that just make sense to people, spoken as someone who likes to split up the Element pieces myself. It's intuitive in a way other, in my opinion better, structures aren't.

WC=Air conspiracy theorists may look at this and yell "see! it's not listed separately because Preiss includes it in the Elements track!" But, no. He doesn't acknowledge that song's existence until later--just before Smiley. He doesn't list IIGS here either, hasn't mentioned that track yet and won't until the next page (81). This sequence is just a half-hearted mess he throws out on a whim, not a serious attempt to put the pieces together. Note Wonderful is conspicuously absent as well, and Prayer too. Since they're never mentioned, I'm not sure he even realizes I Ran, Holidays, He Gives Speeches or You're Welcome even exist to play with. I don't know why this aside was even included in the book if he was going to make so many strange decisions and not justify them, but oh well.

17. The Holmes/SMiLE Animated Film (That Could've Changed Everything)

There's a corroboration of the 90 minute animated special that another source (Priore 2005, I believe) mentioned. This would've been the coolest thing ever, even if it was just a "special" (so, TV?) as opposed to a theatrical release. It couldn't be any worse than Magical Mystery Tour, which would surely have been its competition. And if it were really based on Holmes' illustrations (a detail not mentioned here) it would've been a beautiful trippy piece of experimental animation beating Yellow Submarine to the punch by 6 months at least. Along with shelving SMiLE and skipping Monterey, this must surely complete the trifecta of bad decisions that absolutely destroyed the band's longterm reputation. They literally had the opportunity to do some of the coolest things the Beatles and Stones ever did (minus the murder of a fan) on a silver platter and just absolutely blew it. This isn't me inventing a crazy fantasy scenario, this was all set to happen and Brian screwed it up for no reason but self-sabotage. I wonder if the other guys were aware of this and if any of them recognized the massive opportunity they were blowing by saying no. Were I in the band, I'd have mutinied.

This is the kind of thing that could've legitimized the BBs as a respected, cool band that people wanted to make films out of in the eyes of future generations. Even schoolkids I knew riding the middle school bus in the late 2000s were talking about how much they loved Yellow Submarine and how trippy it is. In college, I knew guys who were big into music getting stoned and doing viewing parties of it in their dorms with a dozen people over really getting into it. Films can often live on in a way that music alone can't, plus they're accessible and exist as ongoing shared experiences for groups. People get together and watch entire movies as a "centerpiece activity" while almost no one invites the gang over just to listen to albums (unless they're all musicians) or if they do it's usually background noise while people talk. (It's the same as in clubs--the music is background to the socializing, not the focus like a movie theater.) This defeatist attitude that SMiLE always would've flopped and only ever appealed to niche audiences is absurd as it is, but with a freaking psychedelic animated movie predating YS under its belt, it would've been a major culture touchstone then and long into the future. There's an alternate universe where the BBs are the generation-defining band of the 60s and all it would've taken was for Brian to make a few different decisions that fateful Spring of '67. I wonder why this isn't discussed as often as the Monterey tragedy.

18. The Death of SMiLE

Brian is said to have grown frustrated with Van's work. Van is said to have left in February (not March or April, the other most common months I've seen) and there's no mention of a prior leave in December. Around this time in the narrative, there's another "disembodied quote" where Brian says "we had a basic argument" but with the text surrounding it, this could refer to Van (my impression) or possibly Murry (who's also mentioned as a negative influence in the same passages).

Marilyn thinks the move to Bel-Air finished SMiLE off, as being in a new place made the old project and thoughts take a backseat. This tracks with what Van has said and makes a lot of sense to me. It seems to be how Brian's mind operated and honestly even more focused, well-adjusted people behave similarly. So again, that's March give or take. Timeline syncs up to where the project became unsalvageable in my estimation.

19. Preiss' Blurry Timeline & Significant Errors

On page 81, probably the biggest error of all, Brian is said to have played Johnny Carson a lot in the home studio. Is this a case where Preiss accidentally transposed a paragraph from ten years later into the wrong section of the book? Was he just full of sh*t? Or was JC somehow written WAY earlier than I thought? (I just double checked and no it wasn't.) This is a glaring error either in editing or research or what but it further calls into question Preiss' reliability as a source. There's actually a good bit of novel info here but I can't fully trust it because of things like this, not that some of it doesn't make intuitive sense on its own.

Aside from its use in the prospective tracklist earlier, OMP isn't discussed on its own until page 82, around when the author has moved onto the home studio era, further blurring the timeline. Then we skip from this song right to Cant Wait Too Long, which is erroneously and unambiguously referred to as a SMiLE track. And no, not in the sense that it borrows WC' melody (which Preiss doesn't mention). It's presented as though this were a song you might've seen rubbing elbows with CE and Wonderful on a finished SMiLE album, which clearly isn't true anymore than "She's Goin Bald" would've ever been on a finished original SMiLE just because it's a reworked HGS. In fact, further complicating matters, WC is only mentioned for the very first time after CWTL in the book. Just reading this, you'd think the song originated in the Smiley era and AFTER a song that we all should know comes from the WH sessions. Major, MAJOR errors here. The very first SMiLE song (not counting GV) is presented as though it were the very last.

Preiss blends together SMiLE and Smiley. There's no dramatic moment of change between the two eras, one flows into the next and as you've seen, he plays fast and loose with the songs and details. We get the same anecdotes of recording in the pool, now there's an added detail of singing in the shower with the water running. Beyond that, very little info on Smiley as is the tradition amongst every single source. There's no mention of a definitive break where SMiLE becomes Smiley, no mention of inter-band conflict or confusion about it, no "guys were blindsided in Europe" or "we almost broke up over whether to release SU." These details were never recorded for posterity and have now died with Brian. If Mike were going to spill the beans, he'd have done it in 2016. Bruce wasn't around for a lot of this. Al...no offense to the guy but I feel like he was the least aware member of the band when it comes to this kinda stuff.

20. How Long Was Heroes?

There's mention of Heroes versions that go up to 8 minutes, and the way this is worded it can be assumed no longer. I'm a strong believer that the supposed 12 minute cut was a Leaf exaggeration. Unless there's some novel odds and ends in the lost tape reels he somehow got to hear in '78, there just simply isn't 12 minutes of usable material unless Brian repeated multiple sections in the same song. (Color me skeptical--2+ recurring "choruses" in the same song is insane even for SMiLE.) Besides, 12 minutes wouldn't fit on a 45 in '67 unless I'm very much mistaken, so why would Brian even construct such a thing? This isn't the Disco Era with 12 minute Moulton mixes, or album-length singles to keep people dancing. It'd need to be a "Heroes part 1, part 2, plus BYS-but-we're-calling-it-Heroes-again-now-for-some-reason" as an album cut or EP. And at that point, it's not a 12 minute version of "Heroes the single," it's "SMiLE, Side 1 of the album," anyway. As I've said, I made a 10 minute cut of Heroes and it's a bloody mess--I couldn't imagine stretching it out a further two minutes.

On page 81 IIGS is finally mentioned (after Preiss' shoddy SMiLE sequence) as an afterthought and in context of Brian's fitness obsession, NOT in the context of Heroes or Americana. You'd never know IIGS was a Heroes fragment or part of BYS (and/or IWBA/FN) if you just read this book, which I think is a significant error.

CONCLUSION

This book, despite its inaccuracies was a great read. I hope anyone interested can pick up a copy, and I'd like to see it archived online like so many of the other seminal BB books. I'd be willing to donate my copy to any group like the Internet Archive who preserve texts online. The watercolor illustrations are gorgeous, honestly worthy of album covers themselves. The novel info about SMiLE, while I must take with a grain of salt due to the book's occasional falsehoods, still provides a fascinating new insight into things. It confirms some of my favorite less-spoken anecdotes from other sources that I was starting to doubt were real. (Specifically, the Holmes-inspired animated film that was planned.) It's by far the most info you'll ever get on Paul Jay Robbins in a single source--which really just shows how little there is to say about him more than anything. It's presented well and there are far more tantalizing quotes than the one everyone seems to throw around about Air as a piano cut. Similar to LLVS, I can now say the people using that as a cheap "gotcha!" to justify their WC=Air theory didn't even read (or at least retain) the book they were using to gatekeep people with other theories and they conveniently ignored the context of the quote which makes it clear neither Preiss nor Brian was talking about WC. For that peace of mind alone, I'm glad I made this purchase.

[mike s]

'Air' was referred to as a 'cut'.  A cut is a recorded piece.

[mike s]

Vegetables likely was not Earth - was at one point but was then made into its own song.  Possibly a skit replaced it..?

[Julia]

Hi Julia. I just discovered one of Lambert's books online. Maybe it's of some use to you.

Good Vibrations: Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys in Critical Perspective

https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/43888/9780472902385.pdf

Thanks, Old Sport. I have actually seen that source before and as I recall there wasn't any new info. I do appreciate the suggestion though!

Vegetables likely was not Earth - was at one point but was then made into its own song.  Possibly a skit replaced it..?

I used to think this, I was as against the concept of Veggies being Earth as I was (and remain) against WC as air. My reasons were primarily that it's a full-blown song with lyrics and not an instrumental, which I'd always been told Elements would've been, also it wasn't labelled "Elements Part X" on the tape, session sheets or studio chatter like Fire. However, there's SO MANY sources, predating BWPS even, that refer to it as Earth I think it's a "where there's smoke..." situation. Plus Van says in the BWPS concert booklet that the only part of Elements he worked on in 66 was Veggies, and that Frank Holmes illustration (based on lyric sheets sent by Van) subtitles Elements as Veggies, or the other way around I forget. There was clearly a connection, that's supported over a large body of evidence. I had to admit on this one I was wrong and Veggies definitely started as Earth, though it seems to have been spun off by December and certainly by March when it became a single. The Elements changed over time, like pretty much every single SMiLE song. I suspect there was an earlier "rustic pastoral" elements that was four songs with lyrics, including Veggies and possibly even IIGS as air, then it morphed into a collage of instrumentals and possibly chants or skits/monologues that was never finished.

'Air' was referred to as a 'cut'.  A cut is a recorded piece.

We may just have to agree to disagree. I think it's as likely as not Brian was just bullshitting or misremembering like he's done a hundred times, and Air was never recorded until CA if you believe my theory. OR if it was recorded contemporaneously, it's lost media on one of those missing tape reels. (Probably the lost IIGS session, that's my guess.) I think the WC tag has been thoroughly debunked, so I say if one is to hold fast that there's an Air among the material we have circa 1966, the onus is on the theorizer to make a case for what else that could be. It's possible All Day/Dada was air the whole time and the "Dada is water" understanding that's even repeated in this book has been a big red herring due to CCW developing out of its melody. I'm amiable to that theory but it's not a hill I'm going to die on either. Otherwise, what else is there? Some Heroes fragment? Part 1 tag?

[mike s]

Yeah V started as Earth but was then spun off.  As the booklets were printed I presume something related would have to go there - or else trash the booklets..?  Or just carry on..?

[Julia]

Yeah V started as Earth but was then spun off.  As the booklets were printed I presume something related would have to go there - or else trash the booklets..?  Or just carry on..?

I think it's a relatively minor thing they would've just overlooked. Brian certainly wasn't going to let some out of date packaging screw up his artistic muse. As far as he was concerned, if it didn't match the booklet or even back cover anymore that was Capitol's problem. And Capitol probably thought "we're already making booklets and inflating the cost to keep Brian happy, no way in hell we're redoing it just to fix a minor 'error' that no one's gonna care about anyway."

[Julia]

Now Im doing the Jon Stebbins book BB:FAQ. Just the SMiLE chapter, I checked and it looks like there isn't any substantial info on this era in the other sections of the book.

1. So, just starting out, I don't like being pedantic but I think to some extent it's gotta be done. There were no tapestries in the tent according to anyone else's testimony, there are only 4 songs unequivocally said to be written in the sandbox, singing in an empty pool only occurred in Smiley, and while he was known to film things on a whim (ala the Paul Williams story of Christmas eve at Brian's) I've never heard that Brian wanted to "film everything" during the sessions. Oh how I wish he had though...would make my current hobby so much easier and more fun. Again, this is artistic license I get it, I just think it's important to point out because if they get this wrong it makes me less inclined to believe other novel info.

2. I appreciate that Stebbins immediately notes how Brian wanted comedy skits and nature/water sounds incorporated into his music. I don't think this is really in doubt anymore, but at least back in the day there were a lot of "SMiLE-Conservatives" arguing anything not explicitly orchestrated belonged on a separate "comedy album" which I'm still not sure even existed as a concept. I think Brian probably talked about doing "a humor album" and some of his friends were too "straightforward" to see that he was talking about SMiLE itself. Like, nobody had ever mixed the two before except arguably Frank Zappa, and even that was very slight in Freak Out, so they couldn't conceptualize a regular symphony with comedic interludes. Either way, SMiLE was clearly intended to have talking on it (contemporary interviews, All Day studio chatter, etc) and it's possible that after opening that door, Brian was inspired to take it further in the future sometime and offhandedly said "hey we could do a whole album of just these comedy skits!"

3. The explanation of the title Dumb Angel on page 84 seems to be pulled from thin air: "an entity that tries its best to help others but constantly screws up everything it touches." I've never seen any insider claim that, and it's quite the reach from just DA alone. I always thought it was a reference to Brian himself, who's basically non-verbal (Anderle's words in Crawdaddy, plus he's evasive in interviews and frightfully shy) but mostly kind-hearted and trying to bring the message of God. He can't explicitly verbalize the revelation from heaven so he expresses it in music instead. I don't think it needs to be any more than that.

4. VDP left, came back, left again. Dates are not given.

5. Carl participated more than any other BB (which I've confirmed by tallying his appearances on the TSS sessionography).

6. I like the way this book describes BWPS: "once the dust cleared and the hype died down, many fans of SMiLE concluded that BWPS was only a facsimile, and a fair-to-good reproduction of the BB' [album] [...] the 2004 version is in no way the BB' lost SMiLE album. The concept is compromised, the context is wrong..." Harsh but accurate. However, I disagree with another quote in the same passage: "it was a surprisingly compact and efficient-sounding collection of songs." The purpose of this last statement is that BWPS proved SMiLE did in fact have a viable cohesive whole, it wasn't an unworkable mess, and I agree with the latter half of this statement but not the first. I think the BWPS presentation is exhausting and drags due to pacing issues from the various 30-second roadbumps, fragmentary IIGS medley and three-part structure which makes it seem twice as long as it actually is. You walk away from BWPS feeling like you just sat through Gone With the Wind instead of Alice in Wonderland (the '51 Disney animated version). I love both of those movies, but the former I only break out on special occasions, maybe once a year or even every other year, the latter I could throw on at any time on a whim and never get sick of it. It's the difference between Electric Ladyland or The Wall versus Axis: Bold as Love or Piper at the Gates of Dawn. It's a great case study in how editing affects momentum, and therefore enjoyment. That's why I'm so hard on BWPS and adamant that SMiLE be officially released in an alternate structure, I think this presentation does the music a grave injustice and is why BWPS and TSS didn't make more of an impact among casuals.

7. I appreciate the way this book acknowledges Prayer could've opened or closed the album. I used to staunchly believe the former and now am equally convinced it was the latter.

8. I also like that Stebbins isn't afraid to admit how "evil-sounding" a lot of SMiLE is. Like psychedelics themselves, even if the trip is overall a 4-8 hour "discourse" on love and inspiration, in my experience there's always a significant underpinning of dread and sadness to the ordeal. (And they do feel like you've been through an ordeal after it's over.) I've had trips where I was laughing AND crying at the same time, where I literally wept with guilt over killing a fly earlier in the day and learned to love my worst enemies one minute, only to turn around and get caught in thought loops of my flaws and the people I've hurt in life. They're the most spiritual experiences I've ever had, but it always shows you heaven AND hell, so to speak. I love how SMiLE reflects this and isn't afraid to be spooky. I love how music as vaguely foreboding as Talking Horns or CE can come in a package adorned with an unassuming kiddie drawing. That's the insane dichotomy that makes SMiLE fascinating and it's what BWPS lacks with its one-dimensional, whimsical circus packaging with Brian forcing a smile every second of the concert footage. (Of all the eras of US history, SMiLE makes me think of colonial, Revolutionary, 1800s, the Psychedelic Sixties themselves and a hopeful future where we learn to live in peace with nature and stop the H&V-esque wars. The last period of history it makes me think of is that tacky early 1900s Barnum and Bailey carnival aesthetic, but that's just me.)

9. Stebbins calls CIFOTM one of the most ambitious and beautiful sections of SMiLE, which is nice because it's an overlooked gem of a track that deserves its due.

That's it, that's the whole thing. He includes two verbatim press releases announcing the then-imminent TSS release. Overall this is a pretty slipshod depiction of the album, no offense to Mr. Stebbins personally. It's too lacking in detail to draw in a newbie OR serve as a useful reference to obsessives like me, but the info is so basic (and largely opinionated or outright incorrect) that it's not really useful in filling in gaps or reframing what we thought we knew either. It's like "baby's first peek at SMiLE." In hindsight this is one I easily could've skipped, and while the rest of the book may be great and I'll check it out someday, I would recommend avoiding this if you're looking to learn about these particular sessions. I'm sure Mr. Stebbins is a great guy and I know he used to post here, but the truth is there's better sources to spend your time on.

Besides the incoming issue of ESQ I've got in the mail, that's it for me for the foreseeable future. If I continue to track down sources and commentate on them it'll be after a break of at least a few months. The next step in this project for the immediate future is to proofread what I've got so far and organize the info from each source into a series of answers to SMiLE's biggest questions, in conjunction with reposting to my blog.

For the record, these appear to be the BB books I haven't touched yet. If anyone wants to carry the torch, do me a huge favor, this could be your reading list--summarize the relevant info and point out differences to the consensus narrative. Or, if you have access to any of these texts already, let us know if they're worth the effort/price of tracking down. Thanks in advance.

The Beach Boys: A Biography in Words & Pictures by Ken Barnes
The Beach Boys by John Tobler
The Beach Boys Silver Anniversary by John Milward
The Beach Boys (Rock and Roll Hall of Famers) by Mark Holcomb
The Beach Boys: America's Band by Johnny Morgan
The Beach Boys by The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys: The Essential Interviews by John D. Luerssen
The Beach Boys Archives Vol. 1 by Torrence Berry
Surf's Up! The Beach Boys On Record 1961-1981 by Brad Elliott
In The Studio with Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys by Stephen J. McParland

^This webpage (http://beachboys.com/booksI.html) was my source to see what BB books I was missing. If you notice anything there that wasn't already "reviewed" in this thread or listed here in my "suggested future reading list," it's because a) I did read them but they didn't have any novel info worth commenting on, b) they have a narrower focus that doesn't include SMiLE, c) I have it on good authority they're not worth my time, money or effort--either very basic info or badly written and error-prone.