The most important song that was to be on the Beach Boy’s ill-fated Smile album was “Surf’s Up”, which was intended to close out the infamous album. Before I say more about Surf’s Up though, here is a little background
information on what was happening at the time:
In 1966, The Beatles released their stunning album, Revolver. The same year The Beach Boys released the most ambitious pop single ever made at that time, and maybe of all time, “Good Vibrations”. I mention this because during this period The Beatles and The Beach Boys were locked in a friendly artistic competition that both groups seemed to feed on. For example, the year before, the Beatles released their terrific Rubber Soul album, and the Beach Boys came right back with Pet Sounds, an equally terrific album — Paul McCartney has often stated it is his favorite album of all time.
With Good Vibrations and the Pet Sounds album firmly in their minds, the Beatles returned to the studio in June 1966 to begin work on Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. However, Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys were already hard at work building a new album around Good Vibrations, called simply “Smile”. The race was on and long story short, Smile in its original form never saw the light of day, and Sgt Pepper became the most famous album ever released by anyone.
Without recounting what happened to the Smile album, a very murky and rather sad tale, there are still portions of the basic tracks that exist today in various forms. In 2003, Brian Wilson did a very nice reconstruction of the
album, but even at best, it only hints at what might have been. Anyone who has ever heard the original versions of “Our Prayer”, “Wonderful”, and “Surf’s Up”, not to mention the extended versions of Good Vibrations and “Heroes and Villains”, gets a sense of how great an album Smile was shaping up to be.
Now, back to Surf’s Up, written by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks. Park’s wonderfully odd cinematic lyrics combined with Wilson’s cathedral-like chords and melody make it one of the most interesting songs from that era. Even Leonard Bernstein admired it and featured it in his great music documentary from 1966. You can watch a snippet of Brian working on Surf’s Up on this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBDqRLkA8ew
Well, after that build up I have ensured that my little folk version of Surf’s Up will disappoint everyone, haha :o) I mean it only as a tribute to Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, really. I tried to stay true to the basic structure of the song as much as possible, but you Brian Wilson enthusiasts will recognize that I do not jump the octave on the “columnated ruins domino” line (this would have stripped all my gears :o). I used my new Octave Mandolin for accompaniment with a sprinkling of a Mexican mandolina overdub here and there, and I added some background color to the “child is father of the man” ending by overdubbing the mandolina several times. A Mexican mandolina is just a boxy looking mandolin actually. It sounds nice though I think. -Ron
Duration : 0:4:11
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