I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose
Emily Dickinson
“Alice sighed wearily. "I think you might do something better with the time," she said, "than wasting it in asking riddles that have no answers."
Lewis Carroll
Fair warning: pure speculation ahead. If you prefer comfortable certainties, you may want to disembark right here.
I thought it might be interesting to spend a few minutes talking about the missing SMiLE lyrics.
Now to be clear, I’m not talking about lyrics that are lost and gone and unknown – irretrievably lost, like the original lyrics said to have been written for “Child Is Father of the Man” or whatever lyrics the Beach Boys sang for “Look” (assuming the lost tapes for that song didn’t consist of wordless backgrounds, or something along those lines). I’m talking about known lyrics that weren’t used: known lyrics that don’t turn up on any 1960s tapes, and don’t figure in the completed 2003/4 SMiLE.
We don’t have a lot of those, and we have them only because of a happy accident – as with the fragments of ancient authors that survive only because they were quoted in other works of the time, or because they were cut up and used as wrapping material. These unused lyrics are still with us because they were given to Frank Holmes as inspiration for his SMiLE illustrations, and because Holmes passed them on to Beach Boys scholar David Leaf. Van Dyke Parks has this to say about their survival:
Oh yes, I had given these to my dear old friend Frank Holmes back in the day…. Thank God somebody had saved these, because the originals I had lost back at a house that was flooded. 1
(Aside: for years Brian Wilson, pushing away troubling questions, told everyone that he had burned the SMiLE tapes – a claim we now know to be untrue. But it turns out that some SMiLE material was very nearly destroyed – not by fire, but by water. Given the elemental themes of the work, there’s a pleasing irony in that story.)
Most of the known unused lyrics were, at one time, intended for the song “Cabin Essence.” Here they are, according to Holmes:
Reconnected telephone direct dialing;
Different color cords to your extension,
Don’t forget to mention
This is a recording.
Even though the echoes through my mind
Have filtered through the pines,
I came and found my peace,
And this is not a recording.
Doobie doo,
Doobie doo,
Or not doobie!
Holmes also remembers an unused couplet from the song known, at the time, as “Do You Like Worms” – although his recollection isn’t quite as reliable:
And there was a last part on there that went something like: ‘Having returned to the East or West Indies – we always got them confused’ 2
Let’s agree to take those as the actual words; there really isn’t any practical alternative.
All right, that’s the sum total of the unused lyrics (although I want to reserve the right to talk a bit about “He Gives Speeches” later on). Can we make any guesses about how they might have fit into the shifting SMiLE landscape?
I. Lots of Humor
Back when SMiLE was still on track for a 1967 release, Brian Wilson had this to say about the album:
The album will include lots of humor, some musical and some spoken. It won’t be like a comedy LP – there won’t be any spoken tracks as such – but someone might say something in between verses. 3
Humor was very much on Brian’s mind at the time. Here’s David Anderle on the subject:
Brian was consumed with humor at the time and the importance of humor. He was fascinated with the idea of getting humor onto a disc and hot to get that disc out to the people. 4
The “comedy LP” mentioned by Brian was a popular genre at the time. Standup and televison comedians – Bob Newhart, Vaughn Meader, Bill Cosby, dozens more – were preserving their routines on vinyl; and many of the albums were respectable sellers. The brilliant Stan Freberg’s hybrid comedy/music albums were
high-concept musical comedies and sound collages that revolutionized the audio format while setting the stage for the hallucinatory sonic visions of the Firesign Theatre and the National Lampoon troupes. 5
Freberg’s hit 1961 album Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America – Wilson and Parks would surely have been aware of it – blended spoken word and music to take a satirical look at American history
including the arrival at Plymouth Rock on "Pilgrim's Progress" – with Freberg…trying to drum up support for the Indian vote. 6
(We might want to note, in passing, the Plymouth Rock reference.)
By 1967, the Beach Boys were touring with the Pickle Brothers comedy team – a different way of blending humor and music – as their opening act. And while Wilson explicitly disavowed any intention of making an album like Freberg’s, it’s probably fair to say that its style of humor would have had an influence on him.
SMiLE wasn’t released in 1967, and it’s impossible to say with certainty what sort of comedic elements it might have included. But we do have some indications. Wilson alludes to “musical” humor, and I think it’s fair to say that “Vega-Tables” and the workshop section would qualify for that description. As for spoken-word comedy bits? Well, we have the “you’re under arrest!” line that interrupts “Heroes and Villains”; and we have the “ow!” of pain when the carpenter (presumably) hits his finger with his hammer.
Acknowledging that we’re entering the realm of conjecture at this point, I think it’s possible that some of the unused SMiLE lyrics might have been intended as spoken-word comedy bits.
For instance, it’s easy to imagine these lines
Doobie doo,
Doobie doo,
Or not doobie!
starting out as exaggerated lounge singing (“doobie doobie doo” is inevitably associated with Sinatra), switching to spoken delivery for the final line. I think of the effect as resembling the giggling ending from the Jefferson Airplane’s “A Small Package of Value Will Come to You, Shortly,” released in 1967:
No man is an island!
No man is an island!
He's a peninsula.
The mechanism is the same: a well-known formula of words repeated twice, followed by a punch line that gives it a humorous twist.
By like token, I think the “East or West Indies” bit would have made a natural spoken-word element for “Do You Like Worms.” Can’t you imagine these lines spoken in an over-the-top Commander McBragg voice, poking fun at a sort of colonialist pomposity that can’t be bothered to keep the different islands straight? (And bear in mind, these islands were only “the Indies,” and their inhabitants “Indians,” by virtue of a confusion.)
Having returned to the East or West Indies – we always got them confused
Where would these comedy snippets have gone? I don’t think we can know that. (Brian says that they “might” have come in between song verses, but I don’t think that’s tremendously helpful; I think placement between song sections, as with the “you’re under arrest!” line, is every bit as likely.) Maybe the mere fact that they went unused – assuming that they were spoken-word lyrics to begin with, of course – can suggest a possibility. If they were in fact intended as transitional elements – from one song to another, or from one song section to another – it might have made sense to hold off on adding them until the final assembly process was underway. Since there was no final assembly – so the theory goes – they were never inserted.
For what it’s worth, the quasi-spoken “pirate” bit, newly written in 2003, strongly suggests that Brian and Van Dyke never fully abandoned the idea of incorporating spoken/comedy elements into SMiLE.
All pure conjecture, as I said. And here’s some more…
II. Catchin’ on to the Truth?
With respect to the remaining unused “Cabin Essence” lyrics, I think the repetitions and rhymes clearly establish that they were meant to be sung, not spoken:
Reconnected telephone direct dialing;
Different color cords to your extension,
Don’t forget to mention
This is a recording.
Even though the echoes through my mind
Have filtered through the pines,
I came and found my peace,
And this is not a recording.
Some folks claim that these may be nothing more than lyrics for unrecorded verses – that it’s possible to sing them over the existing verse melody – but they must be better singers than I am, because I can’t seem to make that work. To my ear, the rhyme-scheme, rhythms and beat counts just don’t fit. I believe this is simply an additional section of the song, planned but unrealized. And there must have been music to go with them, if you’re willing to accept Van Dyke’s account of the SMiLE working method:
Brian always made a melody, and the words were slapped on that melody. The melody wouldn’t have asked him to change a syllable. 7
In fairness, I suppose it’s also possible that they represent a second “counter-melody” section, in parallel with the “truck driving man” lyrics, to be sung under one of the verses, but I don’t find that idea particularly convincing. (An additional possibility: the two “recording” lines could have been spoken-word bits, like the lines discussed in section I above; you can readily imagine them being delivered in a cartoonish nasal telephone-operator voice. But let’s not go any further up that blind alley; even if that were true, it wouldn’t alter the main points here.)
At one point at least – the point at which the lyrics were forwarded to Holmes – these lyrics were obviously just as important or essential as the rest. The artist prominently incorporated the lyrical cues into his illustrations. 8
Thinking about these lyrics – and the ways in which they might fit (or not fit) into the song – I started wondering if “Cabin Essence,” in its original conception, might have been a “bigger” song: more suite-like, and potentially embracing a thematic duality or opposition.
Adding in the unused section, you wind up with a body of lyrics that is more-or-less evenly balanced between rural/frontier/historical imagery, on the one hand, and urban/technological/present-day imagery, on the other. Ignoring the song structure for a moment, and simply grouping like with like, you get something like this:
Rural/Frontier/Historical:
Light the lamp and fire mellow cabin essence;
timely hello welcomes the time for a change.
Lost and found, you still remain there.
You’ll find a meadow filled with rain there.
I’ll give you a home on the range.
I want to watch you, windblown, facing waves of wheat
for your embracing. Folks sing a song of the grange.
Nestle in a kiss below there,
The constellations ebb and flow there
And witness our home on the range.
Even though the echoes through my mind
Have filtered through the pines,
I came and found my peace,
And this is not a recording.
Over and over, the crow cries uncover the cornfield.
Over and over, the thresher and hover the wheat field.
A lamplit cabin warmed by a fire; meadows and fields; natural elements (rain, wind, stars); wheat and corn; circling crows; pine trees; and (ultimately) peace. “This is not a recording”: in other words, this is reality (an ironic touch, since listeners would have heard the words on a recorded LP).
Urban/Technological/Present-Day:
Reconnected telephone direct dialing;
Different color cords to your extension,
Don’t forget to mention
This is a recording.
(Truck driving man do what you can)
(High-tail your load off the road)
(Out of night-life – it's a gas man)
(I don't believe I gotta grieve)
(In and out of luck)
(With a buck and a booth)
(Catchin' on to the truth)
(In the vast past, the last gasp)
(In the land, in the dust, trust that you must)
(Catch as catch can)
This is a very different world: telephones (direct dialing and individual extensions would have been very up-to-date in the mid-60s); trucks high-tailing it along the road; tollbooths; night-life (presumably neon-lit, in contrast to the “mellow” warmth of lamp and fire). We’re out of luck: the “vast past” ends in a last dusty gasp. And “this is a recording”: technology, a recorded voice rather than “folks singing.”
Additionally, the telephone lyrics suggest social connection, while the cabin lyrics, in contrast, suggest peaceful solitude. Holmes strung anachronistic telephone lines to his cabin, but with all due respect, I don’t really think they belong there. (Aside: had the missing lyrics been retained, we would surely have read the “hello” of the first verse, at least in part, as an ironic foreshadowing of the telephone’s presence.)
You may have noticed that the railroad lyrics haven’t been accounted for:
Who ran the iron horse?
Who ran the iron horse?
Have you seen the Grand Coulee workin’ on the railroad?
That’s because, under this interpretation, the railroad imagery represents the hinge, the convergence of the two worlds. The very nickname “iron horse” links the two realities: a powerful mechanical version of the old-time plow horse.
I think – bear with me, I know this is a stretch – it may even be possible to take this a bit further. Consider the lyrics of “He Gives Speeches”:
He gives speeches, but they put him
Back in bed where he wrote his satire
He gives speeches, always reaches
Out a lot, led him to discover
Silken hair, more silken hair
Fell on his face and no wind was blowin'
Stepped across the golden fields
And saw that she was soon trailing after
She was nice and didn't fight
He fell into her friendly persuasion
Late that night while by a streetlight
Little hands shadowed on the ceiling
These aren’t technically “missing” lyrics in the same sense, because the discarded recording survives. Without insisting on the point, I think some of these lines – the golden fields, even the silken hair, with its suggestion of cornsilk – feel like they fit comfortably into the “rural” half of “Cabin Essence.” And some others – the pompous orator, the streetlight illuminating a city street – seem to fit more readily into the “urban” half.
Was “He Gives Speeches” ever envisioned as a “Cabin Essence” section? I don’t think we can answer that question:
He was always interchanging parts…. It was continually changing at that point…I was always being thrown because I would hear something, and then I’d come back the next night, and he’d be shuffling [the pieces] around. 9
That’s Anderle again, commenting on Brian’s ongoing rearrangement of SMiLE components. But if we’re willing, provisionally at least, to consider the possibility, we may have another set of lyrics evoking the two worlds imagined by that song. (Post number 18 takes a slightly deeper look at this odd little snippet.)
If we toss all of these lyrics together we wind up with a longer song, one that’s more evenly divided between two opposing realities. Was that the plan – for a day, a week, a passing second? That’s another question we can’t answer. But we can imagine a creative process whereby, over time, the overarching themes of the entire work began to clarify themselves – with discrete elements sorting themselves accordingly. If that’s what happened, then it may have made artistic sense to skew the “Cabin Essence” balance between primitive rusticity and technological modernity more heavily in favor of the former – leaving “Cabin Essence” as a purer expression of a rural ideal. That might have left the “reconnected telephone” lyrics (and just maybe “He Gives Speeches”) on the cutting-room floor.
That leaves one glaring question: why, if that account reflects the reality of the song’s evolution, was the “truck driving man” section retained? I can think of a couple of answers. It may be, as a practical matter, that that section was well integrated into the song – and judged to be successful. It may be that there was no desire to excise all of the technological/modern content. There comes a point where even reckless speculation has to run up the white flag and accept defeat.
Footnotes
1 Van Dyke Parks, quoted at musicangle.com, 2004 (source unavailable).
2 Endless Summer Quarterly, March 1997
3 Brian Wilson, quoted in Look, Listen, Vibrate, Smile, Domenic Priore, ed.
4 Quoted in Steven Gaines, Heroes and Villains
5 https://www.allmusic.com/artist/stan-freberg-mn0000743878
6 https://www.allmusic.com/artist/stan-freberg-mn0000743878
7 Van Dyke Parks, in BBC Radio 1 SMiLE Special, 1995
8 https://esquarterly.com/2020/05/30/cabin-essence-part-i-all-aboard/
9 David Anderle, quoted in David Leaf, The Beach Boys & The Southern California Myth
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