SMiLE: A Children's Song
From The Smile Shop
SMiLE: A Children's Song, by Lou Schenk (from the original Smile Shop)
Intro to Part One: What does it mean, Van?
What a finished Smile would sound like, what songs would have been included, and in what order, are questions that inspire endless speculation and debate among Beach Boys fans. What the songs mean is a less frequent but no less important topic. It troubled Mike Love during the Smile sessions, and difficulty with Smile's message may be the reason it was left unfinished. What does "over and over the crow cries uncover the cornfield" mean, anyway?
Smile's lyrics are on first glance a peculiar mixture of themes: the American Westward expansion, health food, children, humor, nature, and sexual experience. I contend that these themes are all interrelated, and often expressed in the music as well, so that the lyrics and music are interwoven into a complex, unified musical statement. Smile is a "concept album" in the sense that the songs are linked by an overall philosophical viewpoint and purpose.
Brian was no stranger to the idea of concept albums. He felt (an overreaction, in my opinion) that Rubber Soul was a concept album, commenting on "this unity . . . it felt like it all belonged together . . . like no album ever made before." The unity of Rubber Soul was simply that it was a collection of "all good stuff," similar in overall arrangement and sound. This was the springboard for the creation of Pet Sounds, which also demonstrated a remarkable consistency in musical arrangement and production as well as in the quality of the songs. However, Brian bettered his original inspiration by achieving thematic unity as well. Through Brian's talks with Tony Asher and the lyrics that resulted, the songs of Pet Sounds can be viewed as a paean to lost innocence, a song cycle exploring the emotions and conflicts of adolescence and the confusion and uncertainty of growing up.
Whereas the music of Pet Sounds conveys emotions and feelings, the music of Smile conveys ideas. Chords represent concepts, chord patterns thoughts, and song structures are philosophical ruminations. Smile is more "abstract" than Pet sounds, a fact that may account for some of the resistance to the material at the time it was recorded, its' perceived "uncommercial" nature, and perhaps Brian and Van Dyke's current dismissal of the material. But we shall that the ideas of Smile are both universal and topical, and surely would have appealed to the pop culture of the time.
Part One, Take One: Songs of Innocence and Experience - The Child is Father of the Man
Pet Sounds dealt with the the loss of innocence. Smile outlines the path to recapture that innocence. Smile presupposes that as children we all share a closer bond with nature and with the divine. We live in an idyllic state of wonder. As we grow older we are corrupted by experience and by civilization and lose this spiritual state of bliss.
The theme of innocence in Smile manifests as both a childish sense of wonder at the world and in a child-like simplicity. This simplicity is reflected in the musical settings. The arrangements are less dense and instrumentation barer than the Spectorian symphonic productions of Pet Sounds. Compare the instrumental verse section of "Wind Chimes" to "God Only Knows" to hear the dramatic difference in approach. Some of the musical themes are themselves child-like in their simplicity, like the Bicycle Rider theme. Brian may also have simplified the arrangements to make the songs more accessible to the record-buying public after the relative commercial failure of Pet Sounds. It's ironic that Smile would later be abandoned because of Brian's lack of faith in the commerciality of the material.
Simplicity also represents a pureness of spirit: a "children's song." The child will teach the man the way to recapture his spirituality and his innocence. Previous songs like "When I Grow Up," "Little Girl I Once Knew," and "In My Childhood" attest to the symbolic importance of childhood for Brian. the phrase "the child is father to the man" comes from Wordsworth's poem "My Heart Leaps Up" and was also used as a preface to the "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood." Many of the lines of the "Ode" are echoed in the lyrical ideas of Smile. It tells how "Heaven lies about us in our infancy" but we lose this "state of joy and bliss" as we age: "Where is it now, the glory and the dream?" The poem, like Smile, is a plea for an awakening of consciousness leading to spiritual communion with the divine.
Part One, Take Two: Songs of Innocence and Experience - A Boy Bumped Into Her Wonderful
"Wonderful" recounts the clash of innocence with experience, and the ultimate triumph of innocence. It is the story of a girl who stays in the wonderful, the idyllic state of wonder and spiritual union with God. She is a "believer," uncorrupted by the world, society, and the "non-believers." But experience intrudes upon her ideal world, "through the recess, the chalk and numbers" (images of childhood/school/growing up), and a boy bumps into her wonderful - she loses her virginity to a "non-believer." But she remains uncorrupted, and returns "in love with her liberty" away from the non-believers. We can return to a state of innocence, uncorrupted by experience.
Tag to Part One: Surf's Up - Intimations of Immortality
"Surf's Up" is the thematic centerpiece of Smile, and we don't have to guess at its' meaning because Brian conveniently explained it to Jules Siegel in the seminal article "Goodbye Surfing Hello God." In the song a man comes to an epiphany. He realizes civilization and its' accouterments must be torn down or discarded ("columnated ruins domino") to reveal the spiritual truth beyond the emptiness of adult society. How to get to this truth? Brian tells us to "go back to the kids, to the beach, to childhood" to find "the joy of enlightenment, of seeing God." And the final revelation, "I heard the word," is "a children's song." The lyrics have striking similarities to lines form the "Ode on Intimations of Immmortality": "Our souls have sight of that immortal sea whcih brought us hither . . . And see the children sport upon the shore." Brian's description of the vocal fade demonstrates the unity of the lyrical content and the music: the children's song is the song of "the universe rising and falling in wave after wave," represented by the rise and fall of his voice. It is the song of God.
Part Two, First Verse: Dumb Angel - Humor as Salvation
Humor is woven throughout Smile, mostly in the music but also in the wordplay and punning in Van Dyke's lyrics. "Vegetables" is the most obviously humorous song, but there are many funny moments, like the backing vocals of "Vegetables," "Heroes and Villains" (Carl's nasal, close-miked harmonies), "Cabin Essence" (the "doing doing" vocals), and "Wonderful" (yodeling background vocals on one version), and in the "Swedish frog" heavy breathing section of "Heroes and Villains," the "you're under arrest" interposition, the comic cops and robbers "Heroes and Villains intro," the animal noises and lyrics of "Barnyard." Humor is in the music as well, taking the form of surprises and unexpected turns - sudden changes of tempo, special effects (the explosion/flutter tone of "Heroes and Villains" cantina version), instruments dropping out suddenly to a capella sections, voices replicating natural sounds or the sounds of instruments.
How does humor in Smile tie in with the theme of throwing off the shackles of societal convention that blind us to the wonders of life, and regaining innocence and "liberty?" As Michael Vosse explained, "Brian's preoccupation with the need for humor . . . he felt laughter as one of the highest forms of divinity - and that when someone was laughing, their connection with the thing that was making them laugh made them more 'open.'" So humor was used to open the listeners up and make them more receptive to the spiritual message of Smile. Humor is a link to God: "Brian wanted a lot of humor in the album he was making, Smile, because to him humor was salvation. Humor was the Holy Grail."
So humor is an essential element of Smile and its' meaning. The type of innocent, "dumb" humor Brian weaves into the album is the type of humor that is common in childhood, before the corruption of experience and the sophistication of adulthood. The source for much of Brian's humor was, as Carl put it, the "juxtaposition of the dumb and the brilliant." Hence the original title for Smile, Dumb Angel, where the spirituality of the project and its link with humor is made explicit. By experiencing the humor in the music and lyrics, the listener is more open to the state of childlike wonder and spirituality that the album is all about. Humor is both part of the state of innocence we need to recapture and the means to regaining it.
Pickup to Part Two, Second Verse: The Elements - Music That is a Carrot
Nature suffuses much of the music of Smile: "Vegetables" (eating natural foods - another way to achieve a healthy, "natural" state), "Wind Chimes" (where the music beautifully evokes the wind), "Fire" (a more frightening aspect of nature), the "Water" chant (the soothing, ebb and flow of nature). Nature appears prominently in the lyrics of "Cabin essence," "Wonderful," "I'm in Great Shape" and "Barnyard." Nature became a preoccupation with Brian after a visit to Big Sur in 1966. The experience and contemplation of nature removes the individual from the corrupt influences of modern life. A return to nature is a return to a more spiritual state, closer to God. Why else was Brian playing the piano with his bare feet in a sandbox?
Brian's invocation of nature in Smile is profoundly ambitious. Tom Nolan remarked that Brian didn't want to just get a sound from a carrot, "he would really liked to have made music that WAS a carrot." Brian endeavored to capture the essence of natural objects and phenomena in music, thereby recreating in the listener all the emotional nuances and physical sensations evoked by the original, the same as if the listener was experiencing real fire, a real carrot, or a real barnyard. This goal has parallels in the program music of the 19th century and subsequent symphonic "tone poems" with pictorial associations that were designed to create specific moods. Program music for orchestra was itself influenced by Roussea's "return to nature" movement that helped give birth to Romanticism.
Brian adds to the listener's experience of nature through music by his use of "musique concrete," non-musical natural sounds like the woodshop noises of "Friday Night" and the carrot and celery munching in "Vegetables." The taping of water sounds, although never used, was no doubt intended for this purpose. Brian tries to bring the listener closer to the experience of nature and thereby closer to the "natural" state of innocence.
Bridge to Indians: The Noble Savage vs. Bicycle Rider
The "American Gothic" aspect of Smile described by Van Dyke Parks was introduced as a response to the British music invasion and the sudden embracing of everything Anglican. It was consciously meant to be "counter-hip," to embrace and celebrate American themes. It was not simple flag-waving, as harsh criticism of America and its' history is implied in many of the songs. What is celebrated is the American version of the noble savage.
The noble savage, like the contemplation of nature as a means of spiritual renewal, was another construct of 19th century romanticism. Primitivism was the belief that the natural or earliest conditions of man are best, and that urban living and technical progress bring only evil and corruption. This led to the notion of the uncivilized, primitive man (like the American Indian) as more noble, more pure in spirit, more in touch with nature and the divinity in nature, than the civilized man. Smile is populated with characters who have maintained their spiritual bond with nature: early frontier settlers, farmers, Indians, Hawaiians, the coolies working on the railroad. The lyrics of "Barnyard" humorously glorify the rustic life. BR> Contrast these "heroes" of Smile with the "villains" - the Plymouth Rock settlers who would spread their "civilization" across the continent, the Bicycle Riders (just see what you've done to the church of the American Indian), the runners of the Iron Horse.
In "CabinEssence" the railroad is the new technology which will bring an influx of people, give birth to new towns, and lead to the relentless corruption of city life. This inevitable "progress" is starkly contrasted with the farmers and their meadows filled with grain and "waves of wheat for your embracing." The modern machinery of progress threatens and ultimately obliterates the older, simpler ways of life. Again, the music perfectly portrays this clash of ideas and lifestyles, the harsh "Iron Horse" section with its' metallic clinking and cellos and percussion evoking the sound and feel of the trains on the track, set against the beautifully pastoral "Home on the Range" with its' banjo and harmonica. The two collide in the final "Grand Coulee Dam" section, with the iron horse vocal chorus threatening to overpower nature in the fade.
Thanks to Mike Love the most notoriously obtuse lyric of Smile is "over and over the crow cries uncover the cornfield." The crow, part of the wild natural order, represents nature, innocence, spirituality. Just as the farmer is threatened by the iron horse, the crow bemoans the loss of untouched, undefiled nature. The cultivated cornfield is blocking the "vision of truth." The crow cries for the cornfield to be uncovered and nature restored.
Fade: Smile - Songs of Faith
Many of the philosophical conceits of Smile have their roots in 19th century Romanticism: the turning away from the civilized and modern to the simple and rustic, the distrust of reason and new faith in imagination, the interest in the spiritual influence of nature, primitivism and the noble savage, the idea that with age we lose a spiritual bond with nature and God and that through imagination we can recapture the bliss and innocence of childhood. Many of these ideas would gain notoriety and prominence in the "flower power" ethos of the hippie movement, epitomized in songs like Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock"" "Get back to the land and set your soul free." Back to nature, natural foods, communes, the celebration of native Americans and their culture - the themes of Smile fit very nicely with the countercultural ideas of the time, even if they are presented more elliptically than in most rock and pop music of the day.
Smile is indeed a "teenage symphony to God." Teenage refers not to the teenage concerns and song topics of the day, but to the targeted audience for the symphony. Teenagers were and still are the principal consumers of pop music. A symphony to God because the overriding theme of Smile is religious: "white spiritual music," Brian termed it. Smile is a blueprint for man's return to Eden. The music deliberately creates emotions and responses to bring the listener closer to the state of wonder, innocence, humor and spirituality that the lyrics extol as man's goal.
"Good Vibrations," while not originally planned as part of Smile, is nevertheless consistent with its' message. If emotional states can be tangible vibrations, and music consists of a series of vibrations, so the musical vibrations of Smile can convey experiences and emotions to the listener, "good" vibrations uplifting the spirit and bringing it closer to God. The music of Smile was meant to accomplish nothing less than spiritual enlightenment. It's release may very well have ushered in a new era in popular music, as Brian believed. The album's ambition, beauty, and poetic vision was unparalleled, and its' abandonment one of the great tragedies of 20th century popular music. This article was the First Prize Winner In The Smile Shop's First Ever Contest in 1999.
©1999 Lou Schenk, all rights reserved.
