(soniclovenoize “1967” MONO MiX)
Side A:
1. Our Prayer / Heroes and Villains
2. Vege-Tables
3. Do You like Worms
4. Child is Father of The Man
5. The Old Master Painter
6. Cabin Essence
Side B:
7. Good Vibrations
8. Wonderful
9. I’m In Great Shape
10. Wind Chimes
11. The Elements
12. Surf’s Up
In honor of the passing of the legendary Brian Wilson, I decided to make a highly-requested reconstruction: a specific MONO MIX of my most recent “1967” SMiLE reconstruction from March 2024, which I only released in stereo. While I personally prefer and wanted to hear a true, all-stereo SMiLE, I do recognize that Brian had intended the album to be mono–and that a great many of you agreed! And in making this, well, I can see your point; there is something about this material that simply sounds great in mono. So this is a dedicated mono mix of my specific previous SMiLE edit, which is (currently) my favorite.
As always, the premise of my 1967 Mix is “What would SMiLE have actually sounded like in 1967?” Over the course of the last 50 years or so, many historical revisions and inaccurate assumptions have sort of twisted what I believe the original intent of the album actually was; this is absolutely fine, as it has been observed that SMiLE unintentionally became the world’s first listener-interactive album, in that it is up to you to finish it, using various mixes and sources. Even the eventual Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE (BWPS) is more of Darian Sahanaja’s mix with the benefit of Brian Wilson actually fronting it! But being the intentionalist I am, we will try to go to the source: what would this monster of an album sound like in its original incarnation?
Well, the fact is that we will never know; SMiLE was never completed, and its author simply could not decide how it should be put together at the time of its creation. We can, however, look at the probability of what it would have sounded like, based upon testimony of principal participants, Brian Wilson’s own rough mixes and studio documentation. I have previously and exhaustively covered these specifics, so I am only going to very quickly gloss over them here. But generally speaking:
1) This “authentic” SMiLE will exist “simply” as a standard twelve-song album. The twelve individual songs (excluding “Our Prayer”, functioning as the album’s introduction) are not crossfaded or presented as a medley. However, we are generally losing the two-second leader time between tracks, much as how Sgt Pepper was presented.
2) The twelves specific songs are as listed on the January 1967 letter to Capitol Records from the band's own hand, although not necessarily in that specific order (see label for correct playing order). The song order itself creates two 20-minute sides each, sandwiched by the hit singles beginning the sides and the epic songs closing the sides. There is no overarching concept, as originally suggested by Dominic Priore in the 1980s.
3) The construction of those twelve songs is generally dictated by Brain Wilson’s own blueprint, as heard in his own 1966/1967 rough mix assemblages. If a rough mix assemblage does not exist for a song, we will construct it in a similar fashion as the others to create a cohesive whole, or postulate what it would sound like based upon information available.
One new revision from my previous 1967 Mix is my intentional exclusion of post-1967-recorded material. With a cue taken by my previous Hitsville Mix, we will use recordings dating from just after the conclusion of the SMiLE sessions (“Whispering Winds”, “Water Chant”, etc) in order to present a more complete SMiLE (particularly “The Elements”). We will NOT, however, use any audio dating past the 1971 Surf’s Up sessions, especially NOT anything “flown” in from 2004 Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. Also, we will NOT be using AI-created Brian Wilson-emulated vocals to complete unsung verses; while I appreciate the technology and am not specifically against it, I chose to leave these recordings as complete as they were by 1967 (with vocal overdubs from 1968 for “Cabin Essence” and 1971 for “Surf’s Up”, obviously), for better or for worse. This exercise is meant to see how complete a SMiLE could be using only vintage Beach Boys recordings.
Side A begins with “Our Prayer” to introduce the album, primarily taken from The SMiLE Sessions but with the final vocal part from the Good Vibrations box set to salvage the reverb tail that was otherwise cut from TSS. Following is the legendary Cantina Mix of “Heroes and Villains” which I believe would have been the actual version to appear on a completed SMiLE album, using here the more dynamic source from the Made In California box set. The following version of “Vege-Tables” is an elaborate edit of a number of mono sections: Brian’s original, unreleased 1967 mixes of the verses and first chorus, taken from Unsurpassed Masters 17; the Barbershop Interlude taken from Brian’s 1967 mix on Smiley Smile; and the Vocal Insert, Row Row Chorus and Fade from Mark Linnet’s 1993 mix from the Good Vibrations boxset. Note this construction closely follows Ryan Guidry’s construction from 2000, which was the very first SMiLE mix I’d ever heard, which sent me down this crazy path! A special thanks to him, if he’s out there!
Next is “Do You Like Worms”, which is a dedicated mono mix from my “recreated stems” of the song, using sound sources from the tracking sessions on TSS and isolated vocals from both the Smile Vocal Montage and Unsurpassed Masters 17. Similarly, a dedicated mono mix of “Child is Father of The Man” follows, sourced from the stereo tracking sessions on TSS and the vocal acetates from Disc 1, all edited to follow Brian’s 3-minute 1966 test edit. Following is “The Old Master Painter”, the mono vocal mix from TSS (with the first notes taken from the tracking sessions to avoid the reverb tail of “Barnyard”), crossfaded into the “Heroes and Villains Fade Remake” from TSS, as a replacement from the “Barnshine Fade” that was used previously in “Heroes and Villains”. Side B concludes with a dedicated mono mix from my “recreated stems” of the song, sourced from the TSS tracking sessions and Vocal Montage, as well as the extracted lead vocals from the original stereo 20/20 mix.
Side B opens with none other than “Good Vibrations”, here sourced from the more dynamic master from Made in California, but with the Fade from TSS as I always felt the song prematurely faded out too quickly; an album mix would have theoretically had a longer fade, no? Following is “Wonderful”, taken directly from TSS. A mono mix of my own edit of “I’m in Great Shape” follows, which includes the tracking session synced to a time-corrected version of the vocals from the Humble Harve demo; it is hard edited into the stereo backing track of “I Wanna Be Around/Workshop” with the Workshop effects synced in, mixed to mono.
“Wind Chimes” breezes in, a dedicated mono mix from my “reconstructed stems” of the song, using the stereo tracking sessions and Vocal Montage from TSS, with vocals extracted from Unsurpassed Masters 16; the structure follows Brian’s 1966 test edit (which was also replicated by Mark Linnet in 1993). Following is a mono mix of my elaborate “The Elements” construction, which presumes that Earth is “Barnyard” (with the backing track synced to the time-corrected Humble Harve demo, both from TSS, and isolated backing vocals from Unsurpassed Masters 17); Wind is “Whispering Winds” (taken from Sunshine Tomorrow); Fire is “Mrs O’Leary’s Cow” (taken from TSS with the fire sound effects synced at the end); and Water is “Water Chant” (also taken from Sunshine Tomorrow). The album closes the only way it could: the mono mix from Disc 1 of TSS.
As a bonus, I have included an exclusive mono mix of my edit of a theoretical “Heroes and Villains Part II”, which would have been a theoretical non-LP B-side to the “Heroes and Villains” single; the stereo version of this was previously featured on my Hitsville Mix from November 2022. Using the Gee and Part 2 iterations as a base combined with excerpts from the Brian Wilson led psychedelic sounds, mock interviews and experimental raps, we are able to create a faux Vaudeville variety act! What I am intending is that the listener can imagine The Beach Boys as a psychedelic barbershop quartet who are literally framing a series of comedy sketches, all onstage and concluding with a laughing audience and Prelude To Fade as the closing credits.
Sources used:
- Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of The Beach Boys (1993 CD box set)
- Made in California (2013 CD box set)
- The SMiLE Sessions (2011 CD box set)
- Smiley Smile (2012 CD remix/remaster)
- Sunshine Tomorrow (2017 CD)
- Unsurpassed Masters Vol 16 (1999 bootleg CD)
- Unsurpassed Masters Vol 17 (2000 bootleg CD)
