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Old 07-16-2017, 02:42 PM   #16
soniclovenoize
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Location: Minneapolis, MN
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Originally Posted by fuzzyroes View Post
Right right, that makes sense. But in his book he talked about how he always longed about making the album and how he was so happy to finally go back and finish it and how the 2004 version is the definitive version. So I'm not sure if it was completely driven by the tour... But the timing would at least suggest that it played a major role.

I love your mix though. I like it a lot more than the box-set release. I'm surprised how different it was. Gonna go now to check out the page on your blog to read all the details.
Well, here's the problem:
1) there was absolutely no evidence that the original recordings were a) written as three thematic suites and b) were structured that way, and
2) He couldn't have fit three 15-minute suites on a single LP in 1967, nor were there any references to SMiLE as a 2LP

So the idea of SMiLE as a triple concept about Americana/Live Cycle/Elemental is a modern concept. I believe it was first brought up by author Domenic Priore who analyzed the songs in his 1988 book Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile!, who made his own SMiLE tracklist based on that (all the Americana tracks on side A, all the Elemental tracks on side B). Since then, lots of people have just used Priore's idea as inspiration and did it too.

So when Darian Sahanaja helped Brian complete SMiLE for the purposes of the tour, it seemed to draw heavily on the ideas Priore put forth and organized the songs together by their theme. It's as if the SMiLE mythos that built up over 35 years actually informed how it ended up. Imagine if Corgan simply came here and read the Machina fan theories, and used them to make the double album Machina reissue. Would be kinda dumb, right? Remember that Brian went from refusing to even discuss any of these songs for twenty years, to Sahanaja forcing Brian to confront these demons. Brian has always been vague and rather short in interviews for the last 20 years, I find it rather unlikely that a 21st Century Brian Wilson is describing what he really had in mind for a project 40 years prior, in which was scrapped because he couldn't make up is mind initially.

So I don't believe the was a unifying concept--and especially three suites-- for SMiLE. I think Van Dyke Parks and Brian conscientiously wrote songs about the American West and American Imperialism (Heroes and Villains, Cabin Essence, Do You Like Worms), but also wrote songs not about that at all (Wonderful about female adolescence; Surf's Up autobiographical about Brian; Good Vibrations about telepathy; Vege-Tables literally about vegetables). It was just a collection of songs, some of which had a shared theme. We also have a source, in which VDP verified this, that SMiLE was to be 12 banded songs, without crossfades at all.

The observed "Elemental" theme was just a convenient "catch all" classification for the rest of the songs not about Americana. The original plan was The Elements was it's own song, and consisted of a four-part suite, each representing one of the fourth of the classical elements of earth, wind, water and fire. Sahanaja simply stretched this idea out to cover the remainder of the Smile set. Makes sense for that purpose, but the reality is no one knows what four pieces were to be The Elements, which is a whole 'nother story I could bore you with!

Last edited by soniclovenoize : 07-16-2017 at 02:56 PM.

 
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