Best track on the Beach Boys' SMiLE

But if there was any truth in it, then the 'Strawberry Fields Forever' anecdote would have made far more sense, just because it was the first thing to appear from the Sgt. Pepper's sessions, months in advance. Having said that, wasn't Derek Taylor working for The Beach Boys by this point?

yes, that's covered in "Look!Listen!Smile!Vibrate!", among other places

Yeah, so he clearly had Beatle connections. I wonder if he did hear any of the Sgt. Pepper's stuff in advance, then? I wonder if The Beatles ever heard any of the work in progress on the Smile sessions? Although for some reason, I suspect they didn't. The Beatles never seemed shy about letting their friends hear stuff pre-release, but I suspect Brian Wilson may have been a little more secretive with Smile.

I wonder if The Beatles ever heard any of the work in progress on the Smile sessions?

Paul was at a Smile session in April '67

"Rubber Soul inspired Pet Sounds, which inspired Sgt. Pepper’s and that inspired me to make Smile,” Brian Wilson tells me, recalling his 1960s game of one-upmanship with the Beach Boys’ so-called rivals The Beatles.

“It wasn’t really a rivalry, though. I was jealous!” Wilson says with a hearty laugh. “It was really just mutual inspiration, I think. I would get to hear their records before they came out and I was totally blown away by Rubber Soul. And Sgt. Pepper’s? I was totally blown away by that. But it was inspirational, too.

Won Won Wonderful
dun nuh nuh-nuh nuh

all that is well and good but the drug abuse and mental illness are probably better places to look.

yup

xxxxpost:

Oh yeah, of course, 'Vega-Tables'. Duh!

I wonder how much of the material he heard that was recorded up to that point, then?

Thought Paul played him an acetate of "She's Leaving Home" and it flipped him out, is the story I heard.

As for why Brian was losing his shit, it was drugs. Drugs also explain the whole "I will write an amazing album that will be the best thing ever and lead people to God" pretty easily. It was also kind of pop fashion at the time. This is just a year after John Lennon telling the press his band is bigger than Jesus.

Everyone was on drugs, basically.

In April 1967, McCartney visited Brian Wilson in L.A. to preview Sgt. Pepper, playing "She's Leaving Home" on the piano for him and his wife. "We both just cried," Wilson said. "It was beautiful."

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-greatest-beatles-songs-20110919/shes-leaving-home-19691231#ixzz3ajLLoriG

rushomancy OTM in this thread. we're often led to believe in BW's all-encompassing genius. but getting stuff finished is one of the hardest things to do, and it's all too easy to scrap a project just as it nears completion - I believe that's a really bizarre but common human trait that goes unacknowledged in criticism. there must be so many 75% masterpieces out there that never saw the light of day because a lyric was out of place or a solo hadn't quite been figured out and the auteur wanted it to be 'perfect' but ultimately couldn't get it right.

"Don't Stand Me Down" for a kickoff. At least two tracks added that weren't perfect enough at the time, and now it makes more sense.

the idea that BW listened to Sgt Peppers and had a mental breakdown is p much nonsense. there's also a dispute as to how much acid he took in his time - some reports say he only did it one or two times while others say he took a shit-ton. either way, i'm not even sure either the Beatles or LSD were the real source of his troubles.

something that doesn't get mentioned much about the paul's visit of april '67 is that paul seems to have been kind of a dick during it. listen to the '67 jamake highwater interview; highwater starts talking about how awesome the beatles are and brian wilson basically says, in a polite way, "yeah, the beatles are great- too bad they're assholes". for all of paul's professional admiration for brian wilson, they don't ever seem to have developed any sort of a personal rapport. see also all the times brian has basically publicly begged paul to write a song with him, and paul's obvious disinterest in doing such a thing.

if anything the beach boy the beatles seem to have been closest to during this period was mike love, because they were both on the same maharishi thing.

Well, how many people would have been wanting to team up with Paul, should that one have happened?

A bit like that song Norman Smith (their studio engineer at the time) offered the Beatles when they had no songs left. John (who wasn't there at the time of the offer) doubtless said "U crazy we can't do that!"

I only just realised this but neither Smile 2004 or Smile Sessions has a version of He Gives Speeches/She's Goin Bald; or am I wrong?

The other thing about Smile which I hadn't noticed, is how much of a 'mashup' album it is, referencing and repurposing old doo-wop songs and standards like there's no tomorrow - Gee, Get A Job, The Old Master Painter, You Are My Sunshine (maybe more)... Had many people done this before?

the only thing that springs to mind is buchanan and goodman's 1956 novelty hit "the flying saucer", but of course that's a very different beast to smile. (also add to that "i wanna be around", incidentally.)

the way i see it there are two important artistic choices bw, vdp, & co made on the 2004 version that no fan editor would have made. first is arranging the music into three suites. all the fan edits of the material up to that time had focused on making a record that could have come out on a single lp, but the 2004 sequencing makes that impossible. that's the first thing that says to me that 2004 smile is not simply a "recreation".

the second choice is implied in the first, in that in the 2004 smile (which was, perversely enough, originally put together for live performance) the songs all segue. there's precisely one fade on the whole record, at the very end; even the first two suites come to a cold ending (actually, the same cold ending). this necessitates throwing out rather a lot of the material recorded during the '66-'67 sessions, which almost all have fades. they're pretty great fades, too. songs like "wind chimes" and "do you like worms?" have what are to my mind some of the greatest fades ever recorded, and i don't think anybody who wasn't brian wilson would've felt comfortable leaving them on the cutting room floor.

"he gives speeches" and "with me tonight", both of which had versions recorded during the "smile" sessions proper, tend to be left off people's conceptions of "smile" for two reasons. first is that vdp didn't work on either of them. second is that there's a pretty strong allegiance to the 12-song lp tracklisting when talking about what "smile" is. songs like "look" and "holidays" got in because people assigned them to the mythical construct known as "the elements". aside from "mrs. o'leary's cow", nobody is actually sure what "the elements" consisted of or how many parts it was going to have- even "love to say da-da" (the basis for the second part of "in blue hawaii") was the last "smile" recording session in may '67, and was abandoned unfinished; the "water chant" (the first part of "in blue hawaii" and the middle part of "cool, cool water") comes from later in '67, during the "wild honey" sessions. what brian meant "the elements" to be when he delivered that tracklist in late '66 is fundamentally unknowable.

(also add to that "i wanna be around", incidentally.)

Not being that familiar with much pre-sixties music, I had no idea this was also a rip. Wow! But also wow, in that these are almost complete reimaginings of these tracks.

That kind of chestnut quoting/recontextualizing had been done a lot in classical music (eg Ives) and film scores (eg Alex north "the bad seed") and was the bread and butter of jazz and exotica but was pretty fresh in pop

The legend is that Brian Wilson heard the Mothers of Invention do "Call any Vegetable" and went home and pureed the tapes of "Vega-Tables" - resulting in the version heard on Smiley Smile.

The story goes that Paul McCartney then played Brian Wilson an advance demo of "Your Mother Should Know," and a shaken Brian decided to keep making records after all.

Didn't he own a vegetable shop for a while too?

What solicited the hyphen in Vega-Tables?

The legend is that Brian Wilson had become powerfully interested in astrology, specifically a niche variant that insisted that the charting of one's relationship to the star Vega would determine whether one's music was better or worse than Sgt. Pepper's. Unfortunately, before the track could be completed, he became aware of multiple variants on this theory, which was acknowledged in the lyrical suggestion of one's "favorite" Vega-Table.

otm, and there's evidence for that in BW's interview in Starsign magazine (from Belgium) in August 1968

Love that Vega-Table anecdote. Just goes to show how lost he was.

Yerrrrssss......

that's a wind-up shurely?

another big difference (for me at least) between the BW2004 version and the sessions is that there's no "You're Welcome" on the former.
It doesn't seem to be an obvious part of the original Smile project (like "With me tonight" which is also great) but I love that "song".
and it's a good way to end the album since it kinda mirrors "Our Prayer" as a (almost a cappella) chanting thing.

"he gives speeches" doesn't sound like it was gonna fit anywhere, either, but dang do i love it (and i bet britt daniel's with me)

Yeah, I love "He Gives Speeches." Maybe it would have fit in by not fitting, like "Sloop John B" on Pet Sounds.

the second choice is implied in the first, in that in the 2004 smile (which was, perversely enough, originally put together for live performance) the songs all segue.

This is interesting, because I've only ever really heard it on the vinyl release (three sides), and don't recall any really awkward breaks that jumped out at me! But I should throw it on again and see. Totally correct that a three-sided album was clearly not in the cards in 1967.

The possibility that always lurks under Smile speculation for me is: what if he had gotten it together and released it in 1967, and nobody had much cared? I think it would have been admired in certain circles, maybe even celebrated by a certain kind of hep cat, but I really find it hard to imagine it would have been this barnstorming, generation-defining record. It's wonderful, wonderful music, but if Pet Sounds didn't really hit home in the US then surely this wouldn't have either. At best it would have been its generation's OK Computer or something like that - absolutely hailed and admired by a certain swath of listeners, way bigger than just an indie level of success, but probably not even registering as existing to most people. I mean, there were a lot of albums blowing a lot of minds in the late 60s - would it really stand out as a musical historic touchstone vs. Pepper's, Are You Experienced, etc. etc.? How would Brian feel realizing he'd been outpunched not just by the Beatles but by Jefferson Airplane? In the long run it was obviously incredibly beneficial to this album's legend/stature for it to go incomplete, even if that cut it off from contributing, live, to the emergent counterculture.

also for all the unfinished etc myth, when you think about it, most "main" songs were more or less finished (wonderful, vegetables, cabinessence, surf's up... with the notable exception of heroes&villains, of course).
so it's not like there was a lost huge "good vibration" hit or something.

xp - Pet Sounds was a hit record in the UK at the time IIRC

it would've failed imo. the lack of r&b as connective tissue - which was critical to where rock was headed - is just not there in the album, like, at all.

I mean yeah a small cadre (and the British/euros) would've loved it but it would've bombed in the U.S.

yeah, I agree it would have (relatively) failed to become a touchstone of pop.
maybe not because of the lack of r&b since 67 was still heavily psychedelic pop.
personally, I feel it's not really a pop album. it's closer to 20th century classical music like Saint Saens with elements of popular (not pop) music.

yup, agreed that it would have failed. And then the rest of the wilderness-era albums would have been even worse because they couldn't go back to the Smile sessions/songs for material.

I only just realised this but neither Smile 2004 or Smile Sessions has a version of He Gives Speeches/She's Goin Bald; or am I wrong?

― p:s nerds know (dog latin), Thursday, May 21, 2015 4:47 AM (3 hours ago)

it's on the Smile Sessions bonus disc.

maybe not because of the lack of r&b since 67 was still heavily psychedelic pop

that's true, but in America r&b was still at the center whether it was Nuggets-style or SF-style or Dylan or a lot of the LA scene - the blues figured largely in that music and there is zero of that in Smile.

xp

I mean the album just does not "rock" really - apart from a couple genuinely odd moments in Heroes and Villains etc. - and it's too weird and disjointed to function as more easy-listening/AM radio pop

yeah it definitely doesn't rock. and doesn't really pop either !
Hence my idea that it's not really a rock/pop album.
There are many parts and tracks that are not conventional pop songs in structure and instrumentation.
it's very different from Pet sounds or any other albums of that time in that aspect and closer to Saint Saens' "Carnaval des animaux" for instance.

yeah that sounds like why I've had such a hard time with VDP's Song Cycle, but I love Smile : it pops plenty.
this conversation is reminding me though that I don't know how much VDP had to do with the arrangements on Smile, I guess a lot !

really ? I'm not sure VDP had anything to do with the arrangements. wasn't he only involved with the lyrics ?

he had his hands in a lot of places. in his interview with the red bull music academy (lol), vdp said he came up with the cello part in good vibrations. heroes and villains has vdp all over it

yeah i think they worked on the music together, though obviously brian was the one steering the ship.

VDP was also dealing w the Byrds and Mothers of Invention at the same time period, so was probably in and out from time to time.

y'all seem convinced SMiLE would've tanked in the US, but lest we forget "good vibrations" was a billboard #1 (presuming accuracy of whatever source told me as much nearly a decade ago now, apparently the first US #1 to feature electronic instrumentation). it was a massive song. i agree that he had no other obvious hit in the tank, but had brian been able to follow it up in a reasonable timeframe, maybe its momentum would have continued (granted "vibes" came out in october '66, so "reasonable timeframe" is especially hypothetical here) and i don't think it's impossible that in the music market of the late '60s a single edit of "heroes & villains" or "vegetables" could've endeared as some kind of (surprisingly deep) novelty hit. it's not like the beach boys brand needed any introduction at the time, and the '60s were really the last time america had such a ridiculously open-minded market. (also hey, was it at all conventional to put singles on the album at the time? i know "strawberry fields" and "penny lane" weren't on sgt. peppers so i'm guessing not, but if i'm wrong then including "good vibrations" on the album could've helped as well.)

if i were pressed to guess, yes, i'd say it would have failed too, if simply because capitol and brian's own band/family seemed so reluctant to take the thing seriously any further than recording sessions. without a persistent and clever promo campaign, yeah, it wouldn't have worked. but barring that, i don't think this album selling enough to qualify as a hit was out of the question at the time. in the music market of the day it certainly would've sold a shit-ton more than smiley smile or any of their next handful of records, at least until surf's up (which sold in part because it had finished SMiLE material on it, right?).