I recently got the Beach Boys’ SMiLE Sessions box set, and I’ve been listening to it for the past few days. It’s been really interesting, especially comparing the 1966 version with the 2004 version. So instead of writing a bunch of individual posts about specific things, I’m writing a single post with many elements. I’ll try to go in order of the track listing.
There’s an interesting connection between the lead and backing vocals in “Heroes and Villains.” The lyrics for one part are “Heroes and Villains just see what you’ve done, done,” after which, the backing vocals are just “do, do, do, do, do.” It’s a fairly common word/syllable choice for backing vocals, but here, it’s also a different tense of the repeated “done” from the main lyric. It’s worth noting that the “do, do, do, do” is also the backing vocal for the part before “Heroes and Villains just see what you’ve done, done.”
I also found it interesting that in the 1966 version of “Heroes and Villains,” the line is “Margaritas keep the spirit high,” but the 2004 version has it as “Margarita keeps the spirit high.” One is the drink; one is a person named Margarita. However, the lyrics that follow that line could be interpreted as applying to either the drink or a person.
The backing vocals during the “my children were raised” part are also flipped in the 2004 version. The words (“Boys and girls and boys and girls” etc.) are alternated, panned left and right. In the 1966 stereo version, the left side is first and then the right, but on the 2004 version, the right side is first, followed by the left.
The rhythm in some of the keyboard parts of “Heroes and Villains” also appears in other songs on the album, particularly “Wonderful” and parts of “Look” (also known as “Song for Children”), which helps to give the album more cohesiveness.
I can’t tell if the 2004 version includes it, but hearing the backing track for the 1966 version of “Cabin Essence” revealed that the ascending and descending vocal parts (which resemble the inexorable motion of a train) are doubled with strings. The 1966 version also includes a dobro, which – via plucking – resembles the sound of hammering railroad spikes. So trains (and the railroad in general) are portrayed in the song in two ways. (See an earlier post I wrote about this.)
Through the album, there are also instances of the percussion matching the lyrics. On “Child Is Father of the Man,” there’s a trumpet with some type of mute resulting in a “wah” type sound. In the session highlights (about half-way through the second version), you can hear Brian Wilson say that it sounds like a baby, evidently to reflect the theme and the title. The session highlights for “Surf’s Up” have him commenting on the percussion sounding like jewelry, recalling “the diamond necklace” mentioned in the first line. And, obviously, he uses vegetables as percussion on “Vega-Tables.” I may be wrong, but near the end, it even sounds like he’s figured out how to play two different vegetables to alternate between the tonic and the fifth.
Listening to the 1966 version of the album also reminded me of the Poe reference in “Surf’s Up,” which I’d forgotten about. Namely, the line “the pit and the pendulum.” There are also some other literary references in the song. There’s the obvious reference to Robert Burns’ “Auld Lang Syne,” but I believe there’s also a reference to Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” The line “adieu or die” from “Surf’s Up” isn’t too far from the “do or die” from Tennyson’s poem. (Additionally, the line “the child is father of the man” is from a Wordsworth poem.)
There are also references in the lyrics of “Surf’s Up” to other songs on the album. The line “I heard the word. Wonderful thing! A children’s song” references “Wonderful” (and “Song for Children” on the 2004 version). After this line, the backing vocals are similar to those from “The Child Is Father of the Man.”
Finally, listening to “Good Vibrations” at the end of the album, I started wondering if the line “softly smile, I know she must be kind” is where they got the title for SMiLE.
