Tag Archives: The Beach Boys

Brian Wilson’s Elements

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Brian Wilson probably never studied ancient Greek philosophy, but he knew that, once upon a time, smart people thought the world was composed of four fundamental elements: Earth, Air, Water and Fire. (That’s the list Empedocles came up with in the 5th century BCE.) So when Brian was working on Smile, the famous Beach Boys’ album that didn’t get finished in 1967, he was going to include something called “The Elements”. One of his close friends, David Anderle, remembered it this way:

We were aware, he made us aware, of what fire was going to be, and what water was going to be; we had some idea of air. That was where it stopped. None of us had any ideas as to how it was going to tie together, except that it appeared to us to be an opera. And the story of the fire part I guess is pretty well known by now [Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile!, p. 230].

As the years went by, tapes from the Smile sessions, as well as completed tracks, showed up here and there. This led to many fans creating their own Smile albums, trying to figure out how Brian would have put the pieces together, or simply wanting an album’s worth of music to listen to.

I acquired several unofficial versions of Smile along the way, but didn’t get around to making my own Smile until 2002. That was 35 years after Brian stopped working on the original and two years before he released his finished version, Brian Wilson Presents Smile (which Metacritic determined to be the best-reviewed album of 2004).

A few days ago, a question from another fan got me to look for my homemade Smile CD. When I played it, I couldn’t remember why I’d picked these particular thirteen tracks or why I’d put them in the sequence I did. I couldn’t even remember where some of the tracks came from. Some were obviously from official Beach Boys albums, but others were from sources unknown.  

This brings me back to “The Elements”. The first track on my Smile is a nine-minute, almost all-instrumental with that title. It’s made up of five tracks from the Smile sessions. Two of them are the tracks everyone agrees were intended to represent Fire and Water. The other three are well-known to serious fans, but don’t clearly fit the Elements concept. I’ve reached out to the Brian Wilson/Beach Boys online community (of course, there is such a thing – it’s the Internet), but so far nobody has answered the question: Where did this version of “The Elements” come from?

If someone eventually answers that question, and I’m able to identify the source of a few more tracks, I might put my Smile CD playlist on YouTube. Meanwhile, here’s “The Elements” or “An Elements Suite” or “Selected Smile Instrumentals”, hot off the computer. 

I like it as the beginning to my Smile because it kind of lays the groundwork for the rest of the album. Plus, the first part, “Look”, could represent Air (that’s what we look through); the second part, “Holidays”, could represent Earth (that’s where we take vacations); and it’s clear what “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow (Fire)” and “I Love To Say Da Da (Water)” represent. It all ends with “I Wanna Be Around / Workshop”, which features the guys banging around in the studio, i.e. putting the musical elements of Smile together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3ljBmttLGw

The Beach Boys Ponder the American Experiment on This Fourth of July

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From the YouTube description:
Dennis Wilson composed “4th of July” in the early 70s during the Vietnam War (his co-writer was Beach Boys manager Jack Rieley). Carl Wilson sang the song. It was supposed to be included on the Surf’s Up album, but was withdrawn after a disagreement among the band members. Dennis Wilson drowned in 1983. “4th of July” was finally released as part of the Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of the Beach Boys box set ten years later. Carl Wilson died in 1998.

Note: Unlike most Beach Boys songs, this one was officially released only one time, in 1993 on the “Good Vibrations” box set, which is no longer sold by Capitol Records. The song was not included on the Made in California box set released in 2013.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3JJXbF9_Ow

Conan O’Brien offered additional commentary this afternoon:

Today, we Americans celebrate our independence from Britain while planning our escape to Canada.

I Am Brian Wilson: A Memoir by Brian Wilson with Ben Greenman

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Brian Wilson was the brilliant creative force behind the Beach Boys before his life went sideways. In recent years, he’s had a successful solo career, mainly because he found the right woman to marry and got the mental health treatment he needed.

This memoir is quite good, even better than I expected. Reading it feels like you’re seeing the world from Brian’s perspective, as his recurring thoughts and memories, good and bad, come and go. The book is divided into chapters that bring some organization and chronology to the story, but at times it’s like listening to his stream of consciousness.

Never having heard him speak for any length of time, because he is famously terse in interviews, I wondered if his “voice” was really coming through. I think it was. Brian and his co-writer should be very proud of what they’ve accomplished. They’ve given us an informative look into the mind of this extremely talented man. 

From the Ridiculous to the Sublime: Maureen Dowd and Brian Wilson

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NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd may have written her most embarrassing column yet. And she’s written more than her share of embarrassing columns.

The thing is: Dowd likes Donald Trump. They’ve had personal conversations. So it makes a bit of sense that she wants to give him the benefit of the doubt. Still, her latest column, “Trump in the Dumps”, is quite surprising. 

Trump jumped into the race with an eruption of bigotry, ranting about Mexican rapists and a Muslim ban. But privately, he assured people [apparently including Dowd] that these were merely opening bids in the negotiation; that he was really the same pragmatic New Yorker he had always been; that he would be a flexible, wheeling-and-dealing president, not a crazy nihilist like Ted Cruz or a mean racist like George Wallace. He yearned to be compared to Ronald Reagan, a former TV star who overcame a reputation for bellicosity and racial dog whistles to become the most beloved Republican president of modern times.

After cataloging what she sees as the pros and cons of his candidacy, she ends with a bang:

Now Trump’s own behavior is casting serious doubt on whether he’s qualified to be president.

Now? As in this week?

Could it be that Dowd likes Trump so much and dislikes the Clintons so much that she’s seriously considering Trump’s strengths and weaknesses? And she’s still on the fence a year after Trump began campaigning?

But then it occurred to me that maybe her conclusion was ironic, a bit of understated humor. I usually don’t read Dowd’s column these days, given the silly stuff she writes, but she can be funny in a nasty sort of way. Perhaps she was merely having fun at Trump’s expense? I’d like to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I really don’t know.

In other news, Pet Sounds turned 50 last month and Brian Wilson turned 74 today. In case you don’t know, he’s the tall one with the Beatles haircut on the album cover. So, in his honor, here’s “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” a few times.

First, the instrumental backing track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxItXxRBymU

Next, just the voices (right after the opening notes):

Finally, the finished product:

I said it was from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Love and Mercy Will Be Available June 5th

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In the United States anyway. Love and Mercy is the new movie about Brian Wilson (not the baseball pitcher with the silly beard).

It’s also the name of a song from his first solo album. The performance below, by members of Libera and the Boys Choir of Harlem at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2007, gets me every time.