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Heroes and Villains
written by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks performed by The Beach Boys released July 24, 1967
[Verse 1] I’ve been in this town so long that back in the city I’ve been taken for lost and gone And unknown for a long long time Fell in love years ago with an innocent girl From the Spanish and Indian home Of the heroes and villains
[Verse 2] Once at night, cotillion squared the fight And she was right in the rain of the bullets That eventually brought her down But she’s still dancing in the night Unafraid of what a dude’ll do In a town full of heroes and villains
[Chorus] Heroes and villains Just see what you’ve done Heroes and villains Just see what you’ve done
[Instrumental Break]
[Verse 3] Stand or fall, I know there Shall be peace in the valley And it’s all an affair of my life With the heroes and
[Bridge] [Wordless Vocals] My children were raised You know they suddenly rise They started slow long ago Head to toe, healthy, wealthy, and wise (Boys and) (Girls and) (Boys and) (Girls) (And) I’ve been in this town so long So long to the city I’m fit with the stuff To ride in the rough And sunny down snuff, I’m alright By the heroes and villains
[Outro: The Beach Boys] Heroes and villains Just see what you’ve done Heroes and villains Just see what you’ve done
_____________________
I’ve always really liked The Beach Boys. Perhaps some part of my DNA yearns to follow my Okie kin and ancestors to California. Maybe the TV show Full House, the frequent appearance of The Beach Boys on that show, and the charismatic John Stamos influenced me when I was younger and more impressionable. Maybe I was just susceptible to California’s very effective propaganda campaign over the last several decades. Or maybe I just like the sound of excellent harmonizing. I don’t know. It’s probably all of those things, but I’d guess John Stamos in particular.
In any case, on the long list of their hits, this was always one I enjoyed in particular, I think because it’s odd and sounds like an attempt at a confession or an allusion to something. The song seems to have driven a wedge within the band, perhaps even effecting the mental health of songwriter Brian Wilson. But what’s it all about? What was so important about this song to Brian Wilson? What was the dragon he was chasing? It turns out that answer that is a long story. From wiki:
Wilson envisioned the song as an Old West-themed musical comedy that would surpass the recording and artistic achievements of “Good Vibrations“. The single was Brother Records‘ first release. While it failed to meet critical and commercial expectations, it was nevertheless a hit record, peaking at number 12 in the U.S. and number 8 in the UK.
The song was Wilson and Parks’ first collaboration. Parks characterized the song as “historically reflective” and a “visual effort” that was meant to match the ballads of Marty Robbins. He said the lyrics were based on the early history of California, including references to the involvement of the Spanish and American Indians. Some accounts suggest that the song developed partly from a Wilson reworking of the standard “You Are My Sunshine“. Early versions included sections with lyrics about farm animals (“Barnyard”) and physical health (“I’m in Great Shape”).
“Heroes and Villains” had the most complex making of any song in the band’s history. Recording spanned virtually the entire Smile sessions as Wilson experimented with at least a dozen versions of the track, some of which ranged in length from six to eight minutes. Wilson discarded almost everything that was recorded, with expenses totaling around $40,000 (equivalent to $370,000 in 2023). Most of the final composite was produced in three days at his makeshift home studio. The chorus featured a theme that was cannibalized from another Smile track, “Do You Like Worms?“.
Wilson’s bandmates and associates later voiced dissatisfaction with the released version, believing that the mix was vastly inferior to his earlier, lengthier edits. Commentators blame the record’s failure on the esoteric lyrics, the “muddy” sound quality, and the late timing of the release. It remains one of the lesser-known hit songs in the Beach Boys’ catalog. For Wilson, the single’s failure came to serve as a pivotal point in his psychological decline, and he adopted the song title as a term for his auditory hallucinations. In 2004, Wilson remade the song and its related pieces for Brian Wilson Presents Smile. In 2011, The Smile Sessions was released with an entire disc devoted to the song’s original recording sessions.
Background
Wilson had been working on “Heroes and Villains” for some time before he asked Parks to be his lyricist in mid-July 1966. Al Jardine surmised that the song derived in part from the group’s improvised scat singing exercises from early in the band’s existence. In a 2000 interview, he stated, “We all became instruments for Brian’s barbershop concept. He said, ‘Let’s all do this, let’s sing this idea.’ Carl would be one instrument, I’d be another. Mike would be another instrument. […] With none of us really being players, we would just scat in the car going to a show or something or going to school, anywhere.” Musician Al Kooper, writing in his 2008 autobiography, recalled that Wilson played him a rough mix of “Heroes and Villains” shortly after the release of Pet Sounds. Kooper remembered that the song had “evolved, I believe, from a Wilson revamping of ‘You Are My Sunshine.'”
“Heroes and Villains” was partly inspired by the ballads of singer Marty Robbins (pictured 1957)
“Heroes and Villains” was the first song that Wilson and Parks wrote together. As with the others that they wrote for the Smile album, Parks wrote the words while Wilson composed the music. When presented the descending melody at the initial writing session, occurring a few days after their first meeting, Parks was reminded of the Marty Robbins‘ 1959 song “El Paso” and immediately conceived the opening line: “I’ve been in this town so long that back in the city I’ve been taken for lost and gone and unknown for a long, long time.”
Wilson told Parks that he had thought of the Old West when conceiving the melody. Journalist Domenic Priore speculated that Wilson may have based the verses on Phil Spector‘s productions of “River Deep – Mountain High” and “The Bells of St. Mary’s” – particularly the former’s bass line. Asked in 2004 about the influence of George Gershwin‘s Rhapsody in Blue on the recurring melodies and themes on Smile, Wilson responded: “A little bit, not much. It influenced ‘Heroes & Villains’ and a couple of others.” He credited Parks with some of the music and arrangement on “Heroes and Villains”.
In Parks’ recollection, all but one section of “Heroes and Villains” was written entirely “in one sitting”. The success of the pair’s collaboration led to them writing more songs with an Old West theme, including “Barnyard” and “I’m in Great Shape”. It became an integral track for the Smile project and, later, was often called the album’s “centerpiece”. Wilson envisioned “Heroes and Villains” as a three-minute musical comedy that would surpass his achievements with “Good Vibrations“. In a 1977 radio interview, he offered an anecdote in which he told his father, Murry that he was going “‘to make a record that’s better than ‘Good Vibrations’, something that you could never do. I don’t know why in the hell I said that.”
In a self-penned 1969 article, former band associate Michael Vosse wrote that, during one night at Wilson’s home, Wilson played a past-tense variation on “You Are My Sunshine” on piano that deviated into “this weird little riff”. Vosse said, “And it hit him, man, right then that he wanted a barn yard—he wanted Old MacDonald’s farm—he wanted all that stuff. So he immediately got Van Dyke over and they did a chart for ‘You were my sunshine'”. Although Vosse admitted that his memory may be wrong, since Wilson “changed things so much”, he recalled that the arrangement then “developed into an instrumental thing with barnyard sounds—people sawing—he had people in the studio sawing on wood—and Van Dyke being a duck—and it was marvelous.” Asked about Wilson’s rendition of “You Are My Sunshine” in 2004, Parks could not remember having been involved with it.
Lyrics
To me, “Heroes And Villains” sounds like a ballad out of the Southwest. That’s what it was intended to be—as good as any of those—and, really, to be a ballad. This Spanish and Indian fascination is a big chapter in Californian history, and that’s what it’s supposed to be—historically reflective, to reflect this place. I think it did it.
—Van Dyke Parks, 2004
There are conflicting reports regarding who came up with the title. Wilson credited Parks with naming the song, but Parks denied this, saying that he wrote the lyrics around the title that Wilson had suggested. Wilson’s then-wife Marilyn commented: “There are so many screwed-up people in the music industry. The good guys and the bad guys […] That’s one thing Brian had in mind when they did ‘Heroes and Villains.'” Biographer Peter Ames Carlin interpreted the song as Wilson projecting “all of the feelings sensed inside of himself […] into vibrantly colored, abstract glimpses into another parallel world.”
In Carlin’s interpretation, the song describes “a lawless boomtown somewhere out on the fringes of the Old West” as told from the perspective of a narrator who “speaks as a man who has become a part of the scene, but not of it, exactly, because he’s still so thrilled and terrified by everything he sees.” At the song’s conclusion, the protagonist “has aged and seen his children grow to adulthood” without knowing if his experiences have turned him into a hero or a villain.
Alternate versions of the song tell a different narrative, as Stylus Magazine‘s Ed Howard writes, “‘Heroes & Villains’ told a story, though the actual narrative changed depending on what sections were being added or discarded at any given time.” In reference to “I’m in Great Shape”, Parks commented: “it’s interesting how [in the lyrics] there was, all of a sudden, this turning to eggs and grits. It’s because it had something to do with the thought of a barnyard, and that related to that place we were trying to come up with in ‘Heroes And Villains’. All those lyrics were visual efforts.”
Contrary to a popular rumor, the song was not written about the nascent war in Vietnam. Parks said the lyrics were actually centered around an American Indian “thing” in which he and Wilson “were trying to exculpate our guilt, to atone for what we had done to the aborigines of our own place. There’s a lot of things about belief in Smile, and its very question of belief is what was plaguing Brian at that time. What should we keep from the structure that we had, the hard-wiring that we had with religion?” Historian Keith Badman speculated that the “you’re under arrest” line from an earlier version of the song may have been inspired by Wilson witnessing an attempted burglary of his Rolls-Royce.
Frank Holmes‘ illustration for the song: “The rain of bullets eventually brought her down”.
Artist Frank Holmes, who designed the Smile cover artwork, created an illustration that was inspired by the song’s lyrics: “The rain of bullets that eventually brought her down”. Along with several other drawings, it was planned to be included within a booklet packaged with the Smile LP. Holmes shared a summary of his design choices in Domenic Priore‘s 2005 book Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson’s Lost Masterpiece. Holmes recalled of the illustration, “the poultry in the right corner is saying, ‘Dude’ll do,’ a reference to a line in the original lyrics: ‘She was unafraid of what a dude’ll do in a town full of heroes and villains.’ Van Dyke tells me that Brian saw that image and actually got the other Beach Boys to change their singing to ‘Dude’ll do’, based on this. So there’s a case of the drawing definitely influencing the work.”
I definitely recommend looking into the history of the song even further. This only touches the surface. I don’t know what it’s like to be a genius and I definitely don’t know what it’s like to pursue genius, but this song feels like it lives on that edge between sublime brilliance and insanity (i.e. my wheelhouse.)
While not the gigantic hit that Mr. Wilson envisioned, the song still charted well:
So this odd song, born out of the older song “You Are My Sunshine,” peaked at #12 on the US Billboard Hot 100, was an attempt at a Western musical comedy, and the writing of the song played a role in the mental health decline of one of the most acclaimed song writers of the 20th century. It’s hard to know, but one wonders what part of his vision Wilson could never quite capture.
Sometimes, I suppose, the pursuit of creation can make one his own hero and villain.
The music video, from Brian Wilson’s version of ‘Heroes And Villains’ originally released on the 2004 album ‘Smile’, is embedded below:
