Entertainment For Lively Minds
Word Podcast 193 - the Smilecast
To mark the release of the Beach Boys' Smile in its "Mr Ambassador, you spoil us" entirety we've got Andy Gill in to recount the full story from "Good Vibrations" to the present time, recounting his odd partnership with the ever-voluble Van Dyke Parks, the stubbornness and luxuriant chest hair of Mike Love, the underwater misadventures of Dennis Wilson, the often misrepresented Dr Eugene Landy and the trans-Atlantic battle for supremacy between the former Pendletons and the Beatles.
Plus we present the final selection of the Longest Hair In Rock and the opening of the sealed envelope to reveal Mark Ellen's original nomination. We ask: how many groups have reformed and then come up with a track that is worthy to fit into their top ten best tracks? We've got the best of your posts for the last few weeks plus Fraser's eyewitness report from the rugby World Cup.
Show notes
1. Mike Love's bizarre speech at the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame
2. Brian Wilson talking the Wrecking Crew through Wouldn't It Be Nice
3. Van Dyke Parks in 1976 explaining how his relationship with the group fell apart
4. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd find Brian in violation of the California Catch A Wave code
5. Jon Stebbins' Beach Boys FAQ
6. The Clive James book referred to is Cultural Amnesia
7. Duke Ellington doing East St Louis Toodle Oo
8. Here's Steely Dan doing Jack Of Speed
To hear the full podcast, you need to be a Word Magazine subscriber. Details at www.wordpodcast.co.uk
reformation album winners
The Chameleons ~ Why Call It Anything? as good as anything they'd previously released
Bauhaus ~ Go Away White, their best album IMO
and a splendid podcasts, even for someone like me who isn't a fan of the Beach Boys music
BTW, the bloke out of Type O Negative is Josh Silver not Winter
Silver/Winter
My mistake. I must have been discombobulated by his lustrous corkscrew mane.
Beat me to it!
Why Call It Anything? was my first thought. I'd put Lufthansa in their top 10 easily.
Take
That
confused
is the 15 minute version the full podcast available to subscribers or is it the shorter version for non subscribers.
itunes has only downloaded the 15 minute one, but if there's a longer version how do you obtain it - as a subscriber set it up on itunes a couple of weeks ago following the instructions!
There are two feeds
The old feed now features the 15-minute version, while the new feed features the full-length recording. If you've subscribed to the new URL correctly the full-length version should download. Have you tried using the "Refresh" option within iTunes?
I have...
...the same problem.
It'll be the same issue
You're still must be subscribed to the old feed, as this is the only possible way to get the 15-minute version of the podcast.
Edit: how are you attempting to access the latest podcast?
Okay, I've worked it out.
I seem to be subscribed to the Word Podcast and the Word Podcast Free Edition. I was searching for the new cast in the latter.
yes
tried that already with no success!
shall I try resubscribing to the podcast?
I'll test it
Can you e-mail me your subscriber ID?
Just subscribed again
I have the same problem - really looking forward to hearing this too
on its way
to you this minute.
thanks.
now resolved
courtesy of the all knowing fraser!
what other mag would offer this type of out of hours service!! none i'll wager!
Smile, Schmile
Fans, rock historians and music journalists (and Clinton Heylin) alike all agree that the Beach Boys really began to peak when they started turning out quality work like this.
This is the point where McCartney put his hands up and finally admitted that Brian had won the long-running Beatles/Beach Boys rivalry.
*waits for someone to post the inevitable clip for We All Stand Together*
Having grown up in the 80s
with an impression of the Beach Boys largely from seeing that and the video for Kokomo, I was quite resistant to their charms. I was quite baffled when I started reading about Pet Sounds in the NME (who regularly sang it's praises), I couldn't reconcile that the badly dressed men in that silly video could have made anything worthy of my attention. I realised my error a few years later when I heard PS and the amazing Good Vibrations box set. The BBs must have done more to trash their own reputation than any band in history surely? It's as if the Beatles had carried on, but reverted back to wearing Mop Tops and only playing their pre Rubber Soul material in a cabaret style.
Eric Clapton
Similarly, anyone growing up in the 80s and 90s must have been mightily puzzled when they heard Clapton's name bandied around as the bloke who virtually invented authentic heavy rock/blues and inspired an entire generation of guitarists.
After all, here was a perma-tanned millionaire in his Armani suits churning out one bland FM rock album after another and popping up on the nascent MTV in soft focus and a cloud of dry ice smoke to mime his latest single.
Thankfully, Eric turned it around and clawed back some credibility with at least a partial return to the blues.
Someone somewhere wanted him to be
a Phil Collins-esque 70s rock star turned 80s Pop star.
They tried the same thing with Steve Winwood and actually did a pretty good job, Winwood may not have looked comfortable in a Stockbroker suit cavorting with dancing models on MTV but he did make some convincing AOR 80s rock (which is back in fashion now would you believe?!)
I think with Clapton they were aiming to place him with Dire Straits, which to a certain extent I think they did but as you rightly point out, my 80s image of Eric is the MTV/FM Rock version I grew up with... the bloke doing fancy guitar solos on any number of Live Aid/Princes Trust charity gigs, usually involving Elton, Dave Stewart and that bald bloke banging a tambourine on his head. That rather colours my appreciation of anything he did prior to that.
I can confirm that
I was 12 in 1990 and I was astonished that anyone ever thought he was cool. It was music that Medallion Men and Trevs liked....his name was synonymous with boredom. To this day I struggle to listen objectively to the man. The only thing I really like thay he's had a hand in was All Things Must Pass and Dirty Mac. I thought he was called Slowhand because he was so boring
Cream
There was a documentary with Clapton meeting Jack Bruce for the first time in ages (south bank show?) when he played some great blues on an acoustic guitar, and then admitted that was the stuff he loved but not what the record company wanted. I thought that was terribly sad.
Great stuff
As good as the last one that you got Andy Gill in for. I could listen to you all talk about Brian Wilson for another hour.
The ghost of podcasts past
As a non user of iTunes, and somebody who doesn't really listen much while at the PC, I've tended to download my podcasts - Word, Start The Week, Americana while it was still going, the Week at Westminster and a few others - then bung them on a cd and listen to them in the car.
As a result, I tend to delete them once heard, but I've got a bit of a hankering to revisit a few old ones, relive the golden days of the HORA etc. I suppose I could go back and download them again, but with podcast 200 looming, I had a thought that might help the Word make a few bob.
In the style of many bands these days who will sell you a memory stick after the show with the gig on it, why not sell a Word memory stick, preloaded with the first 200 casts? I'm always using the sticks for work bits and pieces, so once the contents are transferred to the digital archive, the stick will always be handy, and with a suitable Word logo on it, it will also enable the user to look like a suave, sophisticated man/woman about town and gather excited looks where'er you go. Anybody else equally as sad as me?
Streaming
They are apparently streaming the whole album for free here...
http://www.factmag.com/2011/11/01/stream-the-beach-boys-smile-sessions/
A disgruntled subscriber writes:
Is there any way to download the podcast using my iPhone alone? Like I did before? Because frankly I've just jumped through a set of hoops to get this month's podcast and I'm not sure I'm going to be arsed to do that any more.
I'd suggest the RSS Radio app
It's much better at handling podcasts than the default app. Either way, the hoops you have to jump through are a one-time-only affair.
Many thanks, Fraser
Now do you have any idea how to get biro stains out of cotton sheets?
Re-formed bands
On the podcast, the question was asked, are bands ever as good the second time around? In the case of Traffic, I'd say yes. Not the disastrous 2 piece second re-union of 1994 of course, but when Traffic re-convened in the early 70s after Winwood had gone off to play with Blind Faith, they were better than ever.
That was when they recorded John Barleycorn Must Die (their best album for my money), Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys and Shoot Out At The Fantasy Factory
I'd agree that the first reformation..
..gave up a very different (and, agreed, superior) Traffic, but I wouldn't call the 94 album disastrous..it just sounded like a bog standard Stevie Winwood album.
Perhaps
I should have said "forgettable"? ;-)
denintely..
...
podcast download
I've returned home after being away a while. Before going I installed i Tunes on my computer, whereupon it copied every piece of music I had on my computer, which I didn't really need.
Having got home I found all of Podcast 192 & the first 15 mins of 193 on i Tunes.
My question is: how do I transfer the podcast on to my mp3 player. In the past I simply downloaded the podcast, then dragged & dropped it into my player. I can't do this now. Is this the intuitive & user-friendly Apple way of doing things?
Yours, perplexed.
Just cant
find a way to subscribe through my PURE internet radio. which is how I listen to podcasts.
Hmmm
As far as I know, Pure's podcast directory is a curated list - they don't offer a way to add a feed manually, which is a shame. I'll look into this further, though. Which particular Pure do you have?
A pedant writes
Bardney (site of the festival that Mark mentioned seeing the Beach Boys at in 1972 - Great Western Express was it called? I lived just along the road, but was a bit young to go) is in Lincolnshire of course, not Yorkshire.
While we're on pedantry
(adopts nerdy "green ink" voice) I think you'll find...When Brian Wilson recorded Caroline No, his was married to a woman called Marilyn, not Caroline..although apparently she had recently taken a trip to the hairdressers and indeed "let her long hair go" and therefore did believe the song was about her.
I'm not sure it is fair to call The Wondermints a Beach Boys tribute band. They did cover some Beach Boys songs but they were a proper band in their own right, not a tribute band.
The rather snippy quote about Van Dyke Parks cannot fairly be attributed to Brian although it is in his "Autobiography". I think it's widely accepted that the heavily ghost-written biog contains very little of Brian's own words and is full of phrases and vocabulary that Brian would just never use. If you've ever heard interviews by him, he's a man of few words and speaks in stilted halting half-remembered sentences..it is fair to say he doesn't have a lot of banter. That quote should be really attributed to the late Dr Landy or Brian's Ghost writer of the time, Todd Gold.
The dispute between VDP and Mike Love was not about "Surf's Up", it was about a line in Cabinessence "Over and Over the crow cries...uncover the cornfield".
Otherwise, loved it! fascinating podcast.
What I would say, Andy Gill wonderfully describes the full 5 CD set of SMiLE sessions as an Autopsy and yes it is not an easy listen.
However, if you loved Pet Sounds and want to get the full picture of what SMiLE could have been:
Get on Spotify and listen to the 1 or 2 disc summary of the SMiLE sessions (which includes a fairly good attempt at recreating what the album might have been...in Mono!), then hear the "Smiley Smile" album which actually followed Pet Sounds (where the Beach Boys try and re-invent the whole thing in Brian's home studio without the Wrecking Crew and do a bizarre, creepy take on what SMiLE could have been), and then hear the 2004 SMiLE recorded by Brian and the Wondermints..but bear in mind this was largely pieced together by members of the Wondermints with help from Van Dyke Parks and with Brian adding vocal parts and his blessing. The rest, you will have to guess.
The SMiLE saga isn't over and maybe that's where Brian has the last laugh..he made an LP everyone wants to hear.. that you'll never hear.. because it ever only existed in his head.
An alternative theory
Brian was starting to write and record things in bits. These were then assembled into finished hit records, brilliantly in the form of Good Vibrations, very well in Heroes and Villains and hardly at all after that.
I was listening to this stuff yesterday and thinking about what Andy said in the podcast and it struck me, maybe Brian Wilson had no idea of how these little bits were going to be used but was simply hoping that some pattern would suggest itself and none did?
We've a tendency to think that artists who've done great work also have a clear vision. A lot of the time they don't. They just keep on working in the hope that some pattern will emerge.
But...
...I think a pattern did emerge. He just never got around to finishing it; his confidence was crushed by the circumstances. When I listen to the finished 2004 recording, it strikes me that some part of his brain knew exactly what he was doing all along. That's the reason I think that Brian Wilson is one of the few people who deserves the tag 'genius'. To watch or listen to him give notes to the musicians recording 'Smile', in 1966-7 or in 2004, is to witness a man who clearly has the troubling gift to hear all these voices and sounds in his head with such distinction that he can quite feasibly instruct one instrument to be a little softer here, a little more like jewellery there. I think, before he fell apart, some part of him knew exactly what he was doing with 'Smile'. Which is why putting it all back together in 2004 wasn't such a lost cause after all.
AG's right about it being an autopsy, though. Album. Couple of outtakes. That's me done. I tried listening to the whole thing yesterday and began to think that you could actually instigate a nervous collapse by listening to all of it.
Thing that struck me while listening to the out-takes
In 1956 Jim Laker took 19 wickets in a Test Match against Australia. When he'd taken the final one to end the second Australian innings his team mates walked towards him and shook his hand. The odd one patted him on the back. There were no hysterics. Nobody produced a small baby and paraded it round the ground while an admiring wife blinked back the tears and a commentator hyper-ventilated.
I was thinking of this display of restraint when listening to these Beach Boys out-takes where he talks the Wrecking Crew through the backing tracks. Probably nowhere else in the world either then or since could he have found a bunch of players who could pick up his arrangements as quickly as they did and perform them as beautifully.
When they've finished each one, what does he say? He says "good", as if that's only what he'd expect. Makes you think.
But by the time of Smile
he'd already clocked up hundreds of hours of sessions with the Wrecking Crew. He was using them as far back as 1964 so he was well used to hearing the sounds in his head brought to life by world class session players.
On Smile, he's almost using them like a musician today would use Pro-Tools and a bunch of software Plug-ins.
I don't think this is captured on the out-takes, but according to written accounts there are also moments where he becomes frustrated by the players and threatens to throw his toys out of the pram and suggests he could play all the instruments himself. I suspect had he had access to a 24 track desk he'd have done just that.
However, I'm sure early on he'd have been pretty thrilled with what the Wrecking Crew could do. I've not heard any out-takes of 'California Girls' but he may well have been doing victory laps of the studio holding Hal Blaine and Carol Kaye aloft after those sessions.
Think you may have upset a Stone Rose
Mani is a ManYoo fan & previously dismissed the possibility of a reunion with a dismissive 'yeah when City win the Champions League', obviously that was pre the import of billions of petro dollars.
& the answer to a band reformation that recorded something that would fit in their ten best is this:
(obviously their pre-split discography wasn't exactly extensive)
Madness reformation:
While a little different from their pre-breakup (and better known) stuff, The Liberty of Norton Folgate is probably one of the best albums released in the last five years.* No question that it improves the look of their catalogue.
*Caveat: I have not heard much of the music released in the last five years.
James - Reformed
Hey Ma is up there with their best work.
No Regrets, My Little Town
Haven't heard the 'cast yet so not sure if these two are mentioned, but "No Regrets" by The Walker Brothers deserves a spot in their top ten as, I would suggest, does this: everything that's great about Simon & Garfunkel in one song.
Thanks Fraser
Its the Pure Evoke Flow.
Great Podcast
I must admit, I was slightly surprised by Andy Gill's lukewarm reaction to 'The Smile Sessions', which I think is fantastic - one of my favourite albums of the year - but I suppose it takes on a slightly different sort of quality when you're so familiar with the background to it (which I'm largely not).
I'm a huge Beach Boys fan
but I've deliberately avoided getting too deep into Smile bootlegs on the assumption that one day they'd get a proper release, so I'm thrilled to hear all this stuff in pristine quality and there is an awful lot on the discs that I've never heard before. If you've been immersed in the stuff for decades, as I presume Andy Gill has, I guess it will be a bit of an anti-climax.
I think perhaps they could have gone a bit beyond using the 2004 version as a template for the main dish (adhering to editorial decisions made by people in Brian's touring band rather than the man himself), but I suppose they had to draw the line somewhere.
What it does make me think is what will people make of the Beach Boys discography in years to come?
By rights, if you're working through the catalogue you'll hear the newly restored SMiLE after Pet Sounds..and then along comes the bizarre Smiley Smile..and then odd SMiLE tracks crop up on Wild Honey, 20/20, Surf's Up and Sunflower. For example, the impact of Surf's Up when it appears as the last track on the album of the same name is certainly somewhat dimmed.
I'd just like to say
how wonderfully unphotoshopped that snap is of the Beach Fogeys at the head of this piece. Radio One Roadshow, anyone?
You mean
they're not really studiously ignoring the Brazilian under 18 ladies' beach volleyball team warming up behind them?
Dennis Wilson's body ...
... was found.
The complete Smile Sessions
Someone overseas sent me a Spotify playlist with the complete Smile sessions tracks ( I think you can only get the two disc version on Spotify UK ). Anyway, here's the link :
http://open.spotify.com/user/benified/playlist/4uaNyVyK0ySM0Ea3AwUNtO
Tune X and All You Need is Love
Has anyone listened to the track on the complete Smile sessions collection called 'Tune X' ( sometimes known as 'Tones' )? Here it is :
http://open.spotify.com/track/7G39ZQ0K3MI6MPfCVRh05X
It bears a remarkable resemblance to The Beatles 'All You Need Is Love' does it not.
There's a comment on the podcast that Derek Taylor played Brian the early mix of Sgt Pepper and that this may have affected his decision to abandon Smile. Is it possible that the musical exchange might have gone the other way as well?
While I remember..
bands reforming with a song that would go in their top 10?
This, no question;
thank god for that
I have scrolled all the way through these comments after catching up with the podcast today thinking "someone MUST have said Echo & The Bunnymen by now!"
One band who were better after they reformed were
The Damned
The records made by the post split, post Brian James lineup were much better than almost all that went before.
Another
Dexys Midnight Runners
At least two reformations, for Too Rye Ay and for Don't Stand Me Down, both produced wonderful records
They didn't really reform
Kevin Rowland changed the line-up.
One more
Dinosaur jr produced a couple of cracking albums post reformation
'Almost Ready' would fit happily onto any 'best of' record, perhaps even as the first tune