"Heroes and Villains"

I listened to the first disc of The SMiLE Sessions Deluxe Edition box set this morning and noticed a small feature in "Heroes and Villains."  The phrase "head to toe" is a merism.

"Heroes and Villains"

Specifically, this is "Heroes and Villains: Part 1 Tag" (disc 2, track 11 of The SMiLE Sessions [Deluxe Edition Box Set]).  I learned the clavinet part back in May, and yester-day I learned one of the two piano parts.  Here's the notation, with - as always - the disclaimer that I might have something wrong.

Clavinet (notated an octave higher than it's played):

Piano (the last half note is held longer; I just didn't want to have to include any more measures):

"Heroes and Villains"

When I listened to The SMiLE Sessions box set last month, I noticed a couple things about the way some vocals are articulated.  I wanted to wait to write about these until I'd listened to the whole box set, but then I never got around to doing it.

I noticed two small things about "Heroes and Villains."  The line "Once at night, cotillion squared the fight, and she was right in the rain of the bullets that eventually brought her down" is sung to a descending melody, starting at F# and descending diatonically (in C# major) for more than an octave to D#.  This descent seems to represent that bringing "down" in a musical way.

In the cantina section, "margaritas keep the spirit high" is sung to an ascending phrase (B# C# C# D# D# E# E# G# G#), so there's something of a musical representation of that "high."

"Heroes and Villains"

A few months ago, I tried figuring out the organ phrase in "Heroes and Villains" with no success, but since 1967: Sunshine tomorrow has the backing track in stereo, I thought I'd try it again.  This time, I think I got it.  I also figured out the chords (it's just a simple I IV V I progression, although in C# major) and the bass part.  I had to tune the lowest two bass strings down a half-step to get the low D# (then I just played it as if the song were in D major and as if those strings were still in standard tuning).  It doesn't sound very clear, but I think that's just because of my novice audio engineering rather than my having the part wrong.

"Heroes and Villains"

Yester-day I listened to the Smiley Smile/Wild Honey reissue from 1990, and I remembered a reference in "Heroes and Villains" that I'd recognized before but had forgotten about.  It's in the lines:

My children were raised, you know they suddenly rise.
They started slow long ago, head to toe; healthy, wealthy and wise.

(They're how they're written in the liner notes from the 2004 SMiLE.)

The "healthy, wealthy, and wise" part seems to come from "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."  (I'd thought this was a Benjamin Franklin quote, but The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations says it's a proverb from the 15th century.)  Both the lyrics and the proverb rhyme "rise" with "wise," which makes me a bit more confident that they're related.

"Heroes and Villains"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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I was just going to say that one of the things I noticed while listening to SMiLE a few days ago is that there's an ascending melody during the "My children were raised" part, apparently to reflect the raising.   But then I got wondering about the intervals, so I figured out that part.  It's actually based around the C# scale (C#, D#, E#, F#, G#).  Including each note in the scale (at least up to the fifth) helps emphasize the increments and thus the growing that's mentioned in the lyrics.

I'm not sure I have the very end of this right.  There's a D#, but I think there's also an-other note.  I just played an-other D# an octave higher.  As a basis for this, I used track 33 ("Heroes and Villains: Children Were Raised (Remake)") from disc 2 of The SMiLE Sessions [Deluxe Edition].

There also some consonance between "raised" and "rise" in the lines:

My children were raised
You know they suddenly rise