Saturday Night Fish Fry

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During the so-called Summer of Love, this peculiar composition was "in the tube," chartwise, for The Beach Boys. I never understood the song at the time, but it's grown on me after 40-odd years. I still don't understand it, though. And just to make matters a little more inscrutable, here's an alternate version that didn't make it out of the studio until a few decades later. But it's the one Brian Wilson originally intended for you and me to hear.



This track was supposed to be part of Wilson's "psychedelic" masterpiece album, Smile. But his well documented crackup overtook him before he could get the whole thing right to his ears and ego. The completed pieces---the releasable ones, at least---were issued on a disc called Smiley Smile. Yes, "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes and Villains" were basically salvage material from the Smile project. The version of Smiley Smile that I own, a 1990 reissue that also includes the Wild Honey album, includes the present track.

Wilson, morbidly depressed over the whole matter, claimed to have destroyed all the 1966 - 67 Smile masters. He "reconstructed" the project in 2004, unwisely in my opinion. I've unintentionally heard snips from it, and prefer not to hear any more.

So here's a summer song for you, simmered in vinegar by Brian Wilson 44 years ago, presented to commemorate both our current brain-denaturing heat wave and the slide of much of our populace into a state of desperate mental illness. Brian was far ahead of his time on that score, as well.

Heroes and Villains (Alternate Take), The Beach Boys (issued 1990, Capitol C2 93696), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.