The Beach Boys original SMiLE to be released on CD and vinyl LP... Part trois

When do you think we'll hear more? April or May?

 

I think the actual appearance of Smile, even in its leaked and/or incomplete form, helped too. Smiley stopped being a tragic final product and became an interesting partial reinterpretation.

I vastly prefer the gorgeous original Smile version of "Wonderful." But at least I can enjoy the strange remake on Smiley now, as a marginal and interesting diversion. I used to think it was just a horrible song written by someone who had had a complete break with reality. (It didn't even come with a VDP credit at first, and there was no context for its lyrical strangeness.)

Similarly, and MORE so, the Smiley "Wind Chimes" benefits from knowledge of its "straight" (or highly produced) version. It becomes "Wind Chimes, part 2", and its beauty actually shines through better (in my perception, of course). I can "hear" it better than when I first encountered Smiley without the context of having heard any of Smile.

 

This.

Of course, I wasn't there observing or consulting Brian. But neither was anyone else posting on this thread (afaik). Our best evidence remains the recorded releases, and whatever cryptic session notes and anecdotes can be cobbled together. Brian's statements from roughly 1965 to 2032 need to be taken with a grain of salt. Make it a bucketful. BW is not Forthcoming Guy, maybe a comfort zone for him. He will never answer all the specific pointed inquiries. The last thing Brian Wilson should want to do is have an in-depth heart-to-heart with SHF, and and deliver a full disclosure of endless minutiae he likely doesn't remember well.

Relying predominantly on the recorded output, released or otherwise, there can be no other conclusion than that Smiley was a mop-up effort to issue Product. That conclusion is inescapable, especially if you were in that time frame, witnessing the progression of singles, the parallel run of the Beatles, the big step forward of Pet Sounds, Good Vibrations, the Leonard Bernstein TV segment, seeing (later) album slicks and tracklist... Smile was going to be a major statement. That's why all the fuss, decades later.

I like Smiley, btw. Don't love it, but like it. It's fun. But it is clearly a "bunt." Even deceased, Carl Wilson is a much more reliable source of information than Brian ever will be.

This. In spades.

Somebody – it doesn't even matter who at this point – cleaned house and determined that obligations must be met. Likely for several reasons. Today's conventional wisdom that many different factors contributed to Smile's collapse certainly seems the most thoroughly reasoned one.

All we can do now is hope that the people who were actually there – and are amazingly on board together for this – can agreeably come to a reasoned conclusion of what this mysterious record would have been like in '67.

Sure, some conjecture on my part too. But not regarding the anticipation by many in '66-67.

Heck, for all I know, Brian's wife is making him do this.

 

Except that, the evidence from the unreleased sessions material is actually shocking. I guess I am most thinking of "With Me Tonight" .... I'm not sure I've heard any other sessions.

First of all, it sounds much better. Something went terribly awry in the mixing.

Secondly, Brian sounds utterly in control of the session, and serious in his intent to create something masterful.

I can't explain why he would think that songs such as "Surf's Up" and "Cabin Essence" should have been locked away. But I do wonder if, in his state, he might have thought that this short, quiet "candle" album was more powerful, more appropriate, and just plain "better" than the raging fire of Smile.

Maybe he thought it was better art.

EDIT: I actually do think that the Smiley versions of "Vegetables" and "With Me Tonight" are better than their Smile session counterparts, at least based on what has come out. And if "Little Pad" didn't have that messed up intro, it would be one of my fave Beach Boys moments, fragmentary as it is.

 

With Smiley I don't think they were thinking anything except "Lets get some songs out quick". But "Wild Honey" truly is the first Back2Basics record. There are quotes that indicate Brian was still in strategy mode ("Let's do an album about health foods!"). He continued to have his finger on the pulse, and the pulse was.. tired. Beat John W Harding by a couple months.

 

I'm really looking forward to this release... hope they don't overdub anything new onto it.

Agreed: the second half of Heroes and Villains is especially stunning... also the "I know that you'll feel better..." break in Vegetables. I'm a fan of Little Pad, With Me Tonight, and Wonderful as well, partly because they conjure up a certain time and place in my life. Also the spareness of the arrangements tends to work for me; I love the sound of that organ.

It's strange: the stripped-down nature of Smiley does seem forward-looking in a way... sort of like if the Beatles had scrapped the elaborate Pepper tracks and re-recorded some of those songs with the minimalistic instrumentation used on the White Album (I realize some of the White Album is orchestrated).

 

It's funny how this thread is basically a Cliff Notes version of the entire Smile Shoppe message board. I too was a member of that board, but only for a few months before it imploded. That board and the subsequent boards that followed in its wake deeply altered the way I look at music.

 

I discovered the Smile Shop message board about once or twice just before it expired. In retrospect, I certainly wish I'd known about it earlier.

 

I think I can explain it.

I REALLY think that when Brian heard Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane, his competitive ego told him the only way to beat The Beatles to a new sound now, was to go minimalist.

So while a lot of people think the sound of Smiley Smile was Brian giving up, (I know I did at one time) I think it was still Brian being as competitive as ever.

Now, that being said, the album WAS compromised by the fact that they owed Capitol an LP and had to get it out quick.

They salvaged from SMiLE whichever songs they percieved would work well with this new "minimalist" approach, and got it done as a team.

For years I thought that the reason Brian didn't use some of the SMiLE recordings for Smiley Smile, was because he was thinking, well alright, if you guys don't like SMiLE, then do your own damn album.

But now I think the reason those songs in question didn't get released in their SMiLE form was because Brian would rather release "lesser" (in some peoples eyes) versions of those songs than come off looking like he was following The Beatles.

All IMHO, of course

 

It still exists in an altered form with many similar members... I don't visit the "Smiley Smile" board as the founder engaged in activities that I very much disagree with.. I've never visited there since that happened.

http://s3.excoboard.com/therecordroom

 

Agreed. I posted there when I was in high school and a few years after. So many smart people... had a huge effect. Same with the Cab board and (to a lesser extent) the Usenet groups. I miss those communities sometimes but they're just not the same anymore, to the degree that they even exist.

 

Or, if you have that amount of talent and singing ability and songs of that caliber, even recording minimalist, stoned, quickie versions of them are still going to sound good.

Seriously, in that era, at the height of his powers, Brian Wilson would have to try pretty hard to make something sound bad.

But, there are plenty of clues out there that can explain how Smiley came to be:

*If hearing Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane did cause him to feel the Beatles "won the race" to the 'new' sound, then spinning 180 degrees to minimalism makes sense.

*Minamalism means he didn't need expensive studios and session musicians. He could record at home with the Beach Boys. If he was getting paranoid from the drugs and pressures, now he didn't need to leave the house

*Having the Beach Boys around cheered them up too, especially Mike, who got to co-write some new songs with Brian. Now Mike doesn't mind including a handful of the Van Dyke Parks songs either.

*The lack of studio effects (ie--having to do vocals in an empty swimming pool to get some reverb on them) is transformed from handicap to virtue because it fits the 'minimalist/different from the Beatles' goal.

*Brian decides he can get some of his beloved 'humor' on the album now that it is starting afresh and since everybody is joining him in the hashish tent, everybody is ready to giggle along with him. Songs like She's Going Bald and Little Pad go from their more serious SMiLE origins to Smiley silliness.

 

Right on Jose..I couldn't agree more..great post!

 

When did Brian stop using the Wrecking Crew? I'm not familiar with this stuff that much. I know he started around 1964 and at least used them through SMiLE but how much after SMiLE collapsed?

 

Brilliant.

 

Mike Love gets 3 cowriting credits on Smiley Smile (one being GV) Parks gets 4(although Wind Chimes is uncredited on the copy I'm staring at). It's hardly going back to 'family and friends' and cutting out the outsiders.

Brian wrote songs with Bob Norberg, Roger Christian, Gary Usher etc from the beginning of the Beach Boys, he'd used session musicians for almost as long. Van Dyke Parks would have been less a risk as a co-writer than Tony Asher (Parks had written hits for Harper's Bazaar and arranged a big local hit for The Mojo Men. Asher had done nothing). The guys at Capitol would have been rubbing there hands together at the thought of Brian Wilson/Van Dyke Parks co-writes.

 

what did happen to the smile shop?? all i ever saw was a bunch of commentary about the controversy, never learned the nature of it... (just ignore this post if it can't be discussed here)

 

By the time of SMiLE though, Asher had co-written "Wouldn't It Be Nice", "God Only Knows", and "Caroline No". He wasn't a nobody any longer.

 

But recording Pet Sounds would have been much more risky to Capitol than Smile. Smile (especially with Good Vibrations added) would have seemed like money in the bank.

 

Brian's commercial track record leading up to Pet Sounds was strong enough that Capitol had no business interfering or worrying about anything.

 

Pardon me if this has already been exhausted in the other two threads, but if "Smiley Smile" is supposed to be half-assed and minimalistic (in comparison to SMiLE), then what do you think "Heroes and Villains" may have sounded like had Brian had all the time and support in the world to work on it? Would it really have just been like it sounds on BWPS or would it have been grander? Could that song, along with "Good Vibrations", just be an exception to the minimalistic, lo-fi style that is "Smiley Smile" or were both of those songs hurried and slapped together?

 

The "Wind Chimes" lyrics were apparently written by Brian. VanDyke doesn't get a songwriting credit for the song on the GV box.

There's a quote from Marilyn in Byron Preiss's book: "We went shopping one day and we brought home some wind chimes. He hung them outside the house and then one day, while Brian was sitting around he sort of watched them out the window and then he wrote the song. I think that's how it happened. Simple. He does a lot of things that way."

 

Pet Sounds was coming off Party and Barbara Ann while Smile was coming off Good Vibrations.

 

The BWPS version is a lie. It's the post Smile single version with the Cantina section tacked on at the end. Whatever Brian's vision was in 1966 it was nothing like what appeared on BWPS.