Mike Love and SMiLE (no, not what you think)

[MBE]

I agree. Brian had to beileve in it and if he had it would have come out. Reading the session dates you can see he became obsessive over Heroes forgetting everything else. He needed to relax and let the project flow, and he just didn't have the clarity. I am sure he wasn't this poor little angel nor was he a villian. The Beach Boys all had good points and bad, but I don't think any of them were "evil". . They were making a living and five-six people are never going to see everything the same way. The fact remains Brian was in charge and they all didwhat he told them to do even grunting like pigs.

[petsite]

And another point that gets glossed over about this time was the fact that BRIAN was the manager AND the producer of the group. No third party. No one who could say "Brian, finish this up. You have a great record in H&V (from Jan 27th). Release it. And guys (the Beach boys), give Brian some space and he won't let you or the public down. As for Loren, Vosse and the rest, act like a shepard and get the flock out of here!"

[Jay]

Just can't buy it, Brian didn't change to please people, people changed to please Brian.

What about Sloop John B on Pet Sounds? What about Good Vibrations on Smile? I thought Brian and the rest of the group caved in to Capitol on both issues.

[MBE]

It seems that Brian did intend those to be included. I think some paperwork came up about that.

[A Million Units In Jan!]

Sherriff John Stone hit it on the head. This post was basically to express the fact that I think Mike Love has unfairly been blamed for SMiLE's non release for years. I don't care for the guy, I don't think that he's as great as he thinks he is, but that doesn't mean he should shoulder the blame for Brian's inability to get the job done.

When I first got into the BB's, I mean REALLY got into them, it was about twelve, thirteen years ago. Every book I read. eveything I saw on web sights, pretty much the majority of things I saw went like this: Brian Wilson was an angel who everybody screwed over. All the poor guy ever did was write music based on 'love'. Over and over again he sat around and let others walk all over him. Then he started doing drugs to deal with the pain in his life, and now he's a shell of what he once was, due to the drugs and Dr. Landy (which is his families fault because they put him in Landy's care).

This is how I feel about it:
Brian Wilson has made music that's made me cry. At one time he was one of the best composers on the planet. He had a chance to be mentioned with Lennon/McCartney. He had a bastard of a father who caused a lot of what ailed Brian later on in his life. Brian also was known to overdue a lot of things, like sweets, destubols and hash.  He got caught up in making his music 'perfect'. He had doubts about the music, and when his group voiced their doubts, it was just icing on the cake. Think about this; you're recording pieces of music. Then re-recording them. The pieces can be interchangeable. So you start juggling them around like a puzzle. You're popping destubols and smoking hash like it's going out of style. You already have some mental issues as it is. You become more and more confused, and you start to get worn out by the constant tinkering of the music. The more music you make, the harder you try, the more you become dissatisfied with it. You make the comment to an interviewer, 'The harder I try, the more unhappy I am', in regards to the music. In the end, it's easier to make stripped down music that's different, which is what 'Smiley Smile' is.

Early on, I believe Brian knew exactly what he wanted to do. After a couple of months of recording though, it became a little bit harder to decide what goes where. And occasionally he'd make music that scared the sh*t out of him. Listen to 'Heroes and Vibrations' cd. There's a track where they guys are trying to sing their parts, and Brian lets them have it: 'I'm gettin' kinda pissed 'cause you guys keep fucking around'. That doesn't sound like someone who's that concerned about his bandmates not liking what he's trying to do. Nobody is to 'blame' for SMiLE not coming out: Not Mike, Al, Carl, Dennis, David Anderle, VDP, not even Brian. He got burnt out from trying too hard, if that makes any sense.

I've often wondered, if Brian tackled one song at a time, maybe it would have gotten done, instead of a piece of this song today, a part of another one tomorrow....

[Magic Transistor Radio]

A new theory: Charles Manson killed smile!

[Sam_BFC]

What did happened in Beautiful Dreamer:  Brian turns to the camera and says...

Mike didn't like it.

 

well to be fair that is not all he said he does also mention that it was too advanced and that it would have taken ages to get it finished etc.

[Dove Nested Towers]

There were obviously many different factors in the non-completion of SMiLE. In general, the new
people around Brian were not sufficiently grounded to provide a stable creative (or social)
atmosphere for him, and some of them, like Loren Schwartz, were probably actually "bad"
people who actively, if not purposely, destabilized him and fuelled his paranoia, both by their
presences and the substances they facilitated his access to. A lot of them were more concerned
with their hipness quotient than being truly supportive of Brian's creative efforts, with the exception of Van Dyke and David Anderle, at least, who were enrolled and on board with his
direction as long as the friction with band members was manageable. The Capitol royalty law-
suit was a huge distraction, and he definitely needed more support and grounding to counter-
balance the drugs and the manic element that accompanied the quicksilver creative flow.

Carl was clearly ambivalent about the vibe of the work, as you hear on his "Rock With Me
Henry" vocal attempt, but was, I think, on the fence and could have been influenced by other
aspects of the general reaction and atmosphere to get more on board, and he gradually got
disillusioned as the album didn't cohere. Dennis was fully supportive, as we know. Al didn't
like making animal noises, but wasn't actively opposed.

Which leaves the redoubtable Mr. Love. No, he wasn't the sole cause of the album not coming
together, but there is an overly forgiving tone to some of the posts on this thread. It is a real
popular music tragedy that the album didn't reach fruition in 1966-67, and as Brian said to Murry
during the Help Me Rhonda sessions, "we would like to record in an atmosphere of peace."
Mike was aggressively negative and narrow-minded about the project and the creative
partners involved, who I'm sure he perceived as a threat, in addition to his misgivings about
the unconventional nature of the music and lyrics. His hostility quite possibly was the tipping point, the decisive factor in the collapse. Yes, Brian may have, consciously or unconsciously,
set him and Van Dyke against each other, maybe as a test to see if he could count on Van
Dyke to be strong and back him up in their joint creative direction against Mike's powerful negative pressure. And he was undoubtedly beset by personal and substance demons at the
time. It is almost as complex a puzzle as the album itself to analyze the "elements" (ha ha) of
its demise.

Mike Love's intolerance and lack of faith in Brian's relatively avant-garde artistic
experiment, called SMiLE, was undeniably a, not the, critical and decisive element in the ultimate failure of the album
to be completed in its original time of conception. He was the spearhead of the perhaps un-
malicious but nevertheless creatively ruinous forces that, when the band returned from Europe, resulted in the new group of people around Brian
being unseated and the puzzle that was SMiLE not being solved and assembled, which could quite possibly have happened in their absence.

What a loss.

[variable2]

I recommend reading Peter Reum's posts in this thread: http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,2325.140.html

i think he has a fairly complete picture of what happened in 1966-67 with SMiLE.

[The Shift]

Peter's posts were illuminating and very knowledgeable. The guy's an asset to BBs' fandom and we're lucky to have had him in our midst for probably longer than any of the rest of us have ben here.

Personally (when I'm trying to juggle a million tasks, only one of which I'm interested in) I sometimes feel as though I can empathise with what Wilson must have been going through back in the 60s -  he was devoted to an absorbing project, but had other demands and responsibilities tugging him left right and centre. He was surrounded by people whose attentions also lay elsewhere, who didn't appreciate the importance and gravity of what he as trying to do, and whose attitude made him feel as though his project was undervalued and unappreciated. Far easier, then, if you're prevented from devoting 12 hours a day to the one thing that you hold dearest, to allow yourself instead to being distracted by things that merely entertain you for minutes at a time before the next demand on your time noses in. If BW had had the internet in 66/67, he'd've got lost in that, I'm damn sure.  Just as I get lost in it now, rather than get engrossed in a 12-hour creative project of love I know I'm going to get distracted from after five minutes!

Peter, I guess I'm in danger of being next on the couch!

[Dancing Bear]

I recommend reading Peter Reum's posts in this thread: http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,2325.140.html

i think he has a fairly complete picture of what happened in 1966-67 with SMiLE.

Oh, that thread. Still fascinating, after two and a half years. "The Message Board almost broke up, almost split up for good..."

[A Million Units In Jan!]

I've never thought of it that way before-that the twelve track list was actually just a bit of what the whole of SMiLE was going to be about. Instead of an entire movement, the album became 12 songs that sort of fit together. After all, Capitol needed a track list to make the album slicks. That makes a lot of sense-that the album became an album of 'songs' instead of 'movements' to fit the basic idea of what an album was supposed to have. And that made it more accessible to Capitol to see a definitive list of songs, instead of something like

1. H&V (Barnyard, I'm In Great Shape!)
2. Do You Like Worms (Bicycle Rider-See What You Done!)
3. Cabinessence (Who Ran The Iron Horse? Have You Seen The Grand Coulee?')
etc.

Not saying of course that's how it would be listed, but maybe there is a reason all those sections were indiviually labled. If Brian would have submitted a track list that wasn't as traditional as usual,, Capitol wouldn't have been too confident in the new material, I imagine.

[Dancing Bear]

Hmm, that looks like the tracklist for King Crimson's first album. But in that case the musicians argued that the gimmick was a trick to get more money from the Publishing Company.

"Good Vibrations" had sections, was named just "Good Vibrations" and no one was confused. In fact, it was a #1 hit single. So, why f*** with the formula for the next album?