Jules Siegel's reply to David Anderle in "Smile Is Done"

Well!

Well, that was something - and nothing one bit surprising. Thanks for that. 

To me it is a reminder there are always two sides (at least) to every story and also of how young and ambitious they all were.

I distinctly remember reading something you wrote about the importance of Vosse as a source.

All hail to Time Machine! ... It was in your "Psychedelic Sounds" piece. 

Anderle, IIRC (someone can correct me on this) was able to "claw back" for unpaid royalties to the band - and helped get Brother off the ground. Sometimes - when you have a core group in business (band) who are "away from the office" for long periods of time, others become involved and the waters get muddied and they end up making decisions that should be made by the owners (band members.)  

It is/was a very hard era to unpack - to assess what really went down and also figure out who had a stake that was only indirectly connected to the band but somehow the tail ends up wagging the dog or changing the narrative.

And, I will never buy that narrative that the band chucked the project after all the hours in the studio and given that it was to be their first major release on Brother.  Who gets a divorce from a major label, to get some artistic control back, and spends countless hours on tracks besides touring and then stuffs all the work in a locker? (Then you have these stories that the tapes were burned - strongly refuted by Carl.) Below, at about 55 seconds into the interview. 



There is little credibility for me, and it would be like lighting 20 dollar bills on fire to start a new company and not follow through with the first major project.  You either believe the band - the primary source, or you believe those connected to the press who are secondary sources.    

I wrote my opinions on these guys pretty thoroughly on the "hot takes" thread, but I'd like to reiterate some of the key points here:


I think the posse are all different individuals with their own personalities, motives and morals and we should stop lumping them together into this monolithic, singular entity. It's pretty well agreed upon Daro wasn't a good man. If we take these messages about Anderle as 100% truthful (and personally, I don't) then maybe he wasn't either. But that's not enough to convict Vosse and the rest of them as being terrible people. 

I think the fact that they're not bandmembers allows some Beach Boys fans a blank check to use them all as scapegoats for everything wrong that happened in this period. If you're gonna condemn Mike then that offends a portion of the fanbase and youd have to rectify his bad actions with his good ones. Same if you were to blame Brian. But it's easy to throw some random nobodies under the bus and leave it at that. But for me that's not the honest thing to do, when looking at the situation objectively. As we can see from just these three correspondences, and the contradictory anecdotes surrounding the SMiLE sessions, everyone was at least somewhat at fault.


Going by the "he said she said" anecdotes of who was at fault is messy and without hard corroborating evidence, we can't be 100% sure who's lying to push a narrative or innocently misremembering decades after the events they're describing. We need to account for each actor's biases both at the time and when they're telling the story.

Just as an example, of course Mike is going to paint these guys as worthless hangers-on since he didn't know them, he was resentful at being left out of the creative process, and they didn't respect him either. That doesn't mean everything Mike says is wrong, but it's just something to consider when weighing his testimony. 

Another example, Brian's been to hell and back on countless drug cocktails of his own and Landy's making. So his testimony on the subject, especially decades later, is also suspect. Similarly, he's a pretty passive guy who's known to say what he thinks the people in the immediate vicinity want to hear and/or whatever will end the interview the fastest.

VDP is almost certainly going to play up the anti-Mike angle because he lost a lucrative gig on his account. He's tactful enough to know that "attacking" a man who's been through what Brian has isn't going to look good. So he seems to downplay the anecdotes of Brian ordering him around and the two getting resentful of each other. Also, he and Brian seem to be on the outs the last few years, so he probably wont have much positive to say about anyone BB related these days--which is evident in that he backed up Daro's claims from SS. 

Marilyn's husband and life were falling apart and of course she's going to hate these news guys who seemed to enter the picture just as everything went south. However, based on Daro's crass insults towards her even decades later, it's clear she had good reason to hate them (at least some of them.)


So anyway, with all these contradictory accounts, I mostly go by the evidence that's on tape as well as the testimony which goes against the biased narrative you'd expect its teller to be pushing. This is why I put most stock into the Psychedelic Sounds recordings, Vosse articles and Anderle articles. And on those tapes I hear Vosse being nothing execpt 100% respectful and helpful towards Brian's vision at all times. What's more, despite losing out on a lucrative career opportunity thanks to Brian's erratic behavior, he remained reverent and honest about the project and Brian's creative genius even two years later. I also hear Brian as an impulsive guy dragging these guys around in the middle of the night to record his every whim with no clear direction nor any obvious incentive for them to do so. They're not the ones being rude or goading him to do things he doesn't want to--it's clearly the other way around. You can hear some of them complaining about it towards the end of the Nov 4 and Lifeboat sessions. During the latter, the rest of them are perfectly willing to go along with Brian's weird experiment but he keeps angrily yelling at them to shut up, or staging a fight with Vosse which no one else knew was going to happen and didn't react to it in the way he'd expected. When the idea blows up in his face, Brian angrily leaves everyone to play piano as Vosse tries to keep it together and explain what Brian was trying to do. In short, Brian (at least sometimes) was the one being an aimless jerk to people, not the Vosse Posse. 

That doesn't mean some of the Vosse Posse might not have been bad guys, or done bad things too. But painting them all as 100% the cause of all the problems isn't truthful to a good portion of the evidence. Also, based on what I've seen, I think Brian was the one who dropped contact with them, not the other way around.

This is a not the whole career, but a particular window of time, and before Landy. Everything does not go into the kitchen sink.  Artists often work all night. On Brian Wilson Songwriter - Fred Vail talks about how Brian would call him late at night to come over and listen to new tracks.  

There are inconsistencies in these Smile stories. Tapes burned because Jules said so? The "tapes burned" took on a life of its own. One that we listened to for nearly 20 years until Carl cleared that up.  Carl is/was a primary source.

(Van Dyke is/was a very versatile guy who had lots going on - with his resume besides BB involvement.)  

And under evidence standards, since this is about "evidence" - Carl's account comes before a secondary source such as an employee or press person. 

Against my better judgment, Im lifting my "ignore" and responding to you directly in this topic. 

1) Nobody is talking about the whole career. My post was very clearly only about the SMiLE period. If you're talking about my comment about Brian's diminished ability to remember what happened 50 years ago today, I stand by it. Thats already hard for most people to do, and spending a decade of your life in between then and now on who knows what makes it all the more difficult. This should not be a controversial position.

2) Yes, artists can pull late nights. But there's a difference between Brian working late to mix a final cut of a song and Brian dragging his mostly unpaid friends into the studio to record some improvised skits which he hasn't provided direction for is something else. Clearly he hadn't given them advanced notice either based on their comments on tape, or the airport photo he also dragged everyone to late at night. You can't have it both ways, Filled. Were they essential employees of the band, following Brian's clear directives or were they useless hangers on leading him astray? Because if the former, you ought to respect their testimony more than you do, and if the latter then clearly Brian had no right to expect them to pull late nights with him, especially without notice or pay.

3) Yes, there were inconsistencies. That's a major point of my post. 

4) No, Carl is not a primary source. He knew the Fire tapes weren't burned because he had access to the vaults. But he wasn't there for the Fall recording sessions. He wasn't there on Nov 4, the Lifeboat tape, or most of the events Vosse describes in his articles. Carl might have some insight in the Dec '66 and beyond period of SMiLE, but not before. He's debatably *a* primary source, but so are Vosse, Anderle, VDP and the others. 

5) There's no reason to put Carl's word ahead of Vosse or anyone else's who witnessed part or all of the sessions firsthand. The only reason you choose to do so, and choose to twist the meaning of a primary source to suit your biases, is because Carl's a bandmember. This is exactly what I was talking about--people use the Vosse Posse as a convenient scapegoat just because they weren't in the band when such distinctions should be irrelevant in terms of weighing the evidence to determine what really happened. Vosse was there for more of the sessions than Carl, for example. 


EDIT: Unless you have a source of Vosse or Anderle providing Brian with drugs, you can kindly back off using that argument. As far as Im aware, he got acid from Daro (and as much as I dont like Daro, Brian would have gotten it from someone else anyway if he'd been refused.) Was Daro working for BRI or the band? Unless Im mistaken, no he wasn't. You're doing the other big thing I was warning against--treating all these guys as inseparable parts of the same person when really they're many different individuals. 

Comparing Brian Wilson to a kid trying to do ciagarettes or play with matches is infantilizing him. That's a pretty clear cut example. Just because you're a fan of him (as we all are) is no reason to wave away his personal responsibility for doing these substances. He was old enough to make up his own mind and just because he's led a hard life since that doesn't mean we get to blame the consequences of his decisions on everyone else. It might make for a convenient narrative but it's not accurate or fair to the other human beings you're defaming by pushing this excuse.

You are blocked as well. Your post is all over the map-talking about Landy.

No - I don't believe the narratives.  It was a very complicated era, not to be over simplified. And, I bought all those teen magazines in real time and drank the propaganda Kool-Aid, in the 60's.  From time to time, the band would announce randomly that Smile would be out - "soon." I heard that multiple times with my own ears. They had to know the tapes were not "burned." 

Those magazines were from the record companies - who knew that?  They were not independent journalism with fact-checking in play.

Daro admitted this (LSD) on the film and on the other forum.  It matters where it came from. I am not asking him to waive personal responsibility.  Tim Leary lost his job at Harvard for dispensing LSD to students.  Leary had a duty not to cause potential harm to his students. It "matters" what your relationship is.  If you are a dealer on a street corner - not so much - as being in front of a classroom or as an agent, ya, you are in a position of greater duty and responsibility to not cause potential harm.  

Now, I am looking through a legal lens for evidence, not someone's hearsay.  

Yes, legally, an agent (or representative) does not put the client in harm's way. 

And, the thread is Jules Siegel's reply to David Anderle in "Smile is Done."  I mentioned Daro - with reference to the Sheriff's post.  

You should know that posts within posts are visible.

Kidding aside, you are ignoring the legal responsibilities of teacher's/professors and others in official or quasi-official capacities. That is my lens. Those responsibilities are generally non-waivable, no matter how convincing someone can be, looking for matches or cigarettes or drugs.  That's the analogy for me.  

Yes, he could have gotten LSD elsewhere, but the admissions by Daro tell us otherwise.  

You can easily research Daro's role. At no point did I mention Vosse. Where did that come from? 

And, p.s. My kids already told me I am the #1 fan.   

No idea where you got that notion from - Smile was always going to be on Capitol.

The singles with the Brother logo weren't released until July and August of 1967. The Smiley Smile album on Brother came out in September. "Smile", which was slated for release in January 1967 on Capitol (black label), was well over with before the singles and album came out on the Brother label in 1967. In fact, there was a plan to release the Wild Honey album as Brother 9002, but it came out on Capitol instead. The Capitol Record Club also released "Smiley Smile" on the black Capitol rainbow label. 

Records with the Brother lablel were still distributed by Capitol.