American band, Smile piano 'Worms'

[buddhahat]

In the American Band doc, during the Smile section you can hear what sounds like a piano demo of the Hawaiian chant section of worms. Is this an authentic Brian demo or was it just fabricated for the documentary? If it's real, is it available on any boots?

Thanks

[Zander]

I've always wondered about that segment, to me it looks as though Brian is playing it "live" and not dubbed over the top. Cant' see anyone to a special effort to recreate a a "demo" version of Worms?

Was this footage from the Leonard Bernstein special? I bet some one with the full show could let you know if this is the case...

[buddhahat]

I thought I heard that for this section of the doc, they synched the worms music over footage of his playing but that it's not the actual soundtrack to the visuals (which presumbaly are from the Bernstein thing) I'm sure somebody can clarify. I agree that it seems odd somebody would go to the trouble of faking a demo of the hawaiian bit of worms for the doc. Maybe they guessed what he was playing from the footage of his hands and it happens to be that bit!!

[c-man]

To me, it always did seem like a sync instead of a soundtrack.  And MAYBE the footage is from the stuff Dennis shot (where the footage of Dennis and Carl is from)?  Just a guess.

[XY]

On one side, the dark room piano shots fit to the "Inside Pop" transcripts, on the other side we have a pic of Dennis filming it in the SS/WH Twofer booklet. So, it's probably Dennis footage. I guess Ed Roach would know...
I tend to believe that the piano demo comes from Brian, because this overdub would be the only non-BB insert in the complete film...beside perhaps the "Summer Means New Love" backing vocals, which I also think is original BB.

[Old Rake]

I thought I heard that for this section of the doc, they synched the worms music over footage of his playing but that it's not the actual soundtrack to the visuals

Alas -- this is 100% true, as it is true for the vast majority of that film. Sadly. I'm not even sure its Brian playing -- wasn't the story that they found someone who kind of pieced together what he might be playing, and they recorded them playing it on top?

[LostArt]

That's how I remember it, Jon.  Someone figured out what he was playing from watching his hands, and they played it on top of the video.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

That's how I remember it, Jon.  Someone figured out what he was playing from watching his hands, and they played it on top of the video.

That sounds kind of far fetched. And his hands don’t even match the music anyway. Why would they go that far for something so trivial? They could have used anything from the vault there. Heck, there’s tons of solo piano pieces in the can (Vegetables, CIFOTM). But if we have confirmation of this, I guess there’s nothing to argue. Just seems like a crazy thing to do.

Even if this is footage shot by Dennis, I still believe it’s the same night as the CBS shoot.  It totally fits the description. Can one of our more musical people here on the board tell for sure what he’s playing? I’d figure it would be Surf’s Up. His left hand might be doing the bass riff from the end of the song (Child section).

[buddhahat]

That's how I remember it, Jon.  Someone figured out what he was playing from watching his hands, and they played it on top of the video.

That sounds kind of far fetched. And his hands don’t even match the music anyway. Why would they go that far for something so trivial? They could have used anything from the vault there. Heck, there’s tons of solo piano pieces in the can (Vegetables, CIFOTM). But if we have confirmation of this, I guess there’s nothing to argue. Just seems like a crazy thing to do.

Even if this is footage shot by Dennis, I still believe it’s the same night as the CBS shoot.  It totally fits the description. Can one of our more musical people here on the board tell for sure what he’s playing? I’d figure it would be Surf’s Up. His left hand might be doing the bass riff from the end of the song (Child section).

It does seem a lot of effort for a few seconds of footage. As you say they could have used other demo material - would anyone notice or care that it didn't  correspond to what he was playing? Why go to such effort - that's real perfectionism on the doc maker's part! Is there definite confirmation that this piano demo is not authentic then?

[Bicyclerider]

I don't believe we know for certain if it is a 66 Brian piano demo or something later, but it seems strange that for the entire documentary they would "fake" only this one bit of music - would make more sense to just not have any music there, or cut the scene entirely.  But it's weird that this piece of music never showed up on the SOT series, which used dubs of the tapes reviewed by the American Band music staff.

[37!ws]

I personally wouldn't be surprised if a LOT of the music in the film were faked, INCLUDING the piano-plus-vocal version of "Summer Means New Love."

Dig -- all the piano pieces...."Friends," "Girl, Don't Tell Me"....a few others, perhaps, that I'm not recalling off the top of my head...so why not the pseudo-Hawaiian thing? (If it ISN'T fake, how come it hasn't come out on any bootlegs in the past twenty years?)

[punkinhead]

where's girl dont tell me piano on the docu?

[andy]

I agree with Ho-Tep. I think the footage perfectly depicts what Jules Siegel wrote, so I think Dennis could be filming the CBS session.


If the person playing the Hawaiian theme was trying to play what was seen on the video, then it'd be very interesting. That footage is either separate from the CBS session, or the Hawaiian theme was a part of another song, as Worms is not mentioned on the transcripts. Or a third possibility could be that Brian was playing this without CBS cameras rolling.

Maybe I'll go home tonight and figure out what Brian is playing.

[buddhahat]

I agree with Ho-Tep. I think the footage perfectly depicts what Jules Siegel wrote, so I think Dennis could be filming the CBS session.


If the person playing the Hawaiian theme was trying to play what was seen on the video, then it'd be very interesting. That footage is either separate from the CBS session, or the Hawaiian theme was a part of another song, as Worms is not mentioned on the transcripts. Or a third possibility could be that Brian was playing this without CBS cameras rolling.

Maybe I'll go home tonight and figure out what Brian is playing.

Yeah work it out, please?! That would be cool.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

 
Well, if we can confirm what he is playing…or at least confirm what he isn’t playing, that would be a big help. The video is running fast, so an attempt to create a piano piece to go with it would be unsuccessful anyway. Unless he is playing the Worms riff, in which case it would probably be at a less hyper speed.

Of note is the fact that they head from the Worms riff to the Bicycle Rider music, either a nice coincidence or they knew the two went together. How educated were the filmmakers on Beach Boys music? I am not familiar with the filmmakers’ background.

Again, it seems fruitless for the film crew to record their own music when they had infinite resources before them, although the odd mix of “Here Today” shows that they weren’t afraid to meddle with history.

The “Summer Means…” point is a strong one, although Alan has said he has spent time searching for it in the vaults. Seems like he wouldn’t be chasing after it if he knew it was a fake. It does sound a bit suspicious to me as well. But are we to say that the filmmakers dragged a 5 part-harmony group into a studio for such an unimportant piece of background music?

I’ll have to review the film again tonight. I haven’t watched it in a while.

What this all comes down to again is the fact that we must…MUST...be allowed to review the contents of the CBS film cans. I don’t care who sees it, just as long as someone, anyone, sees the tapes and can report to us what they saw IN DETAIL. Just the notes along are a treasure trove of valuable information. Imagine what else is on those tapes…..

It is the key to the Smile mystery. I have no doubt.

Can’t Alan Boyd kick the door in and flash a badge? “I’ve got a warrant. Hand over the tapes!”

[Roger Ryan]

Again, it seems fruitless for the film crew to record their own music when they had infinite resources before them, although the odd mix of “Here Today” shows that they weren’t afraid to meddle with history.

I believe Alan mentioned that, at least after the film's debut, the producers of "An American Band" were not allowed to use any of the Beach Boys masters, so by necessity the soundtrack is made up of outtakes, unreleased mixes and live material. Obviously there were no "SMiLE" masters at this point (apart from the tracks finished for subsequent albums) so I don't know how that would explain the appearance of the "Hawaiian" piano melody.

[HeyJude]

Again, it seems fruitless for the film crew to record their own music when they had infinite resources before them, although the odd mix of “Here Today” shows that they weren’t afraid to meddle with history.

I believe Alan mentioned that, at least after the film's debut, the producers of "An American Band" were not allowed to use any of the Beach Boys masters, so by necessity the soundtrack is made up of outtakes, unreleased mixes and live material. Obviously there were no "SMiLE" masters at this point (apart from the tracks finished for subsequent albums) so I don't know how that would explain the appearance of the "Hawaiian" piano melody.

This is what I've heard as well regarding the AAB documentary. The theory I've heard is that they went out of their way to make the mixes sound different to the final masters to demonstrate that they weren't using the original masters/mixes. If the rule was simply that they couldn't use the final masters/mixes, then they presumably could have done remixes of the songs, but still made them conventional mixes that sounded nearly identical to the original mixes. But they apparently wanted to demonstrate that they were using new/different mixes (or, in a few cases, later-era live recordings) to avoid any suggestion that they were using the original mixes/masters.

Apparently, a short theatrical run of the documentary (which also included at least one additional scene using the studio recording of "Friends" as a back drop that was cut from the video version) utlilized the original mixes/masters.

One other comment: You can't really use the fact that a given piece hasn't been bootlegged as evidence of that piece not being a legitimate Brian/BB recording. The SOT stuff is certainly not anywhere near the entirety of what is in the vaults, even concerning only material from the era that the SOT stuff covers. And what has been booted beyond the SOT stuff is certainly relatively little compared to what exists in the vaults. Heck, the material currently in the vault is apparently not even 100% representative of everything that was recorded, considering there are apparently tapes here and there that are missing!

And I'll say one thing regarding the AAB documentary. It certainly seems to be a strange black hole for audio and video material, as apparently some of the video stuff used in the documentary has turned up missing as well (hence the use of an inferior video dub of the Central Park 1971 footage in "Endless Harmony"; compare this footage in EH to AAB and you'll see show much cleaner it looks on AAB; Alan Boyd might be able to explain this better).

[king of anglia]

I really don't understand the intrigue. It's plain to my ears that all these "demos" are just 80s background filler. That "Summer Means New Love" cut is blatantly Jeff Fosket singing.

[37!ws]

where's girl dont tell me piano on the docu?

Well....to be honest with you, I don't recall, but I THINK it's in the background when Carl talks about how much Murry loved their harmonies....one of those outtakes from the 1976 TV special (which, btw, was NOT titled It's OK, as I just learned recently!)...

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

 The fact that the Oppenheim footage is sans narration adds to the idea that the filmmakers may have had access to the master tapes, and thus, possibly, the dark footage of Brian at the piano is genuine Inside Pop footage and not just a Denny Wilson home movie (a multi-angle, artistically lit home movie to boot).

In fact, the reel descriptions as listed on this site speak of shots of hands and face in the dark. We're dimissing the idea of the footage being from the shoot based on a single photograph on Denny with a camera.

I agree these audio oddities sound phony. I just don't understand why they would bother to use them though.

I'm more interested in figuring out what Brian is playing. I watched last night and using the DVD player put the video at it's correct speed. It could be CIFOTM or the end of SU. I don't have a keyboard in front of me to mimic him. Anyone check it yet?

[andy]

In fact, the reel descriptions as listed on this site speak of shots of hands and face in the dark. We're dimissing the idea of the footage being from the shoot based on a single photograph on Denny with a camera.

There were some photographs posted of the boys in the studio during vocal sessions (I think Al was wrapped up in mic cables). Does anyone know where I can see them as well as the shot with Denny holding the camera and Brian in the background?

I'm more interested in figuring out what Brian is playing. I watched last night and using the DVD player put the video at it's correct speed. It could be CIFOTM or the end of SU. I don't have a keyboard in front of me to mimic him. Anyone check it yet?

I watched it last night. I can say, for sure, that the bass hand doesn't match the Hawaiian theme at all (rhythmically). And, on the right hand, all I could make out were a couple of notes (D). If anyone has access to coloring software and the colors of that video could be inverted it'd be a lot easier to see what's played.


-Edit-







Now, if someone has that pic of Denny filming with Brian in the background that'd be great.

[XY]

[andy]

Thank you so much for posting those, Jasper. I was hoping there was a very small chance that Dennis would be wearing the same outfit in those pictures, or that you could make out something in the background that would identify the location of Denny's video.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Those are great pics. Sure don't look like a group of angry people trying to undermine Brian. I blame the demise on Smile to his Seasonal Affective Disorder. Broke down same time in December '64. '66 no different.

From what I saw of the video, his right hand seems to bounce between two chords. To my eye, it rhythmically resembles the piano version of CIFOTM, like what you hear on SOT. But I can't say for sure.....

[andy]

I'm pretty sure it's two chords too. You can also notice how his hand shifts for the second chord to get an idea of where he's going.


It could be the ending of Surf's Up for all I know. If I could only figure out the left hand.