I’m Waiting for the Day

(Brian Wilson – Mike Love)

Music: Brian Wilson
Lyrics: Brian Wilson, Mike Love
Instrumental Arrangement: Brian Wilson, assisted by the studio musicians
Vocal Arrangement: Brian Wilson

Producer: Brian Wilson
Engineers: Bowen David, Bill Brittan, Ralph Valentin, Pete Romano

Personnel:
     (voices)
Brian Wilson – lead vocals, backing vocals
Mike Love – bass vocals, backing vocals
Carl Wilson – backing vocals
     (instrumentation – basic)
Al De Lory – grand piano (w/taped strings) [Steinway Model C Art Deco]
Larry Knechtel – electric organ [Hammond C-3]
Carol Kaye – electric 12-string guitar [Guild CE-100D custom]
Ray Pohlman – electric 6-string bass [Fender VI]
Lyle Ritz – double bass
Jim Gordon – drums
Gary Coleman – timpani
Bill Green – flute
Jim Horn – flute [Gemeinhardt C Flute]
Jay Migliori – flute
Leonard Hartman – cor anglais
     (instrumentation – overdub)
Sid Sharp – violin
William Kurasch – violin
Leonard Malarsky – violin
Ralph Schaeffer – violin
Harry Hyams – viola
Justin DiTullio – cello

Recorded to 1/2″ 4-track and 1″ 8-track (4 to 4 to 8):
March 6, 1966 (2:00pm-8:00pm) / Western Recorders – Studio 3 (track)
March 8, 1966 / Western Recorders – Studio 3 (transfer, vocals)
March 10, 1966 / Columbia Recording Studios – Studio A (transfer, vocals)
Circa March 20 to 30, 1966 / Columbia Recording Studios – Studio A (vocals)
April 13, 1966 / Columbia Recording Studios – Studio A (vocals)

Mixed to 1/4″ mono:
March 10, 1966 / Columbia Recording Studios – Studio A (Mix 1)
Circa March 20 to 30, 1966 / Columbia Recording Studios – Studio A (Mix 2)
April 13, 1966 / Columbia Recording Studios – Studio A (Mix 3 – Master)

Initial Release:
1966 Mono Mix 3 – Pet Sounds LP (Capitol Records, 1966)
1996 Stereo Mix – The Pet Sounds Sessions (Capitol Records, 1997)
1966 Mono Mix 1 – The Pet Sounds Sessions (Capitol Records, 1997)

Vocal Guide
– lead: Brian
– 2nd verse & tag responses: Mike
– ‘duh duh’ bass : Mike
– ‘ahhh’ backing: Brian>Mike+Carl (just Brian>Mike in stereo mix)

 

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Beginnings

Early in the summer of 1963, Brian Wilson wrote down a list of 23 of his latest unreleased compositions for the purpose of checking off which needed lead sheets for publishing. Remarkably, these weren’t even all of the new songs he had in the works. At number 22 on the list was “I’m Waiting for the Day,” a romantic ballad about waiting for a lover to move on from past heartbreak that seemed to owe some melodic influence to the 1961 Joe Dowell hit “Wooden Heart” (notably also recorded by Elvis Presley). 

How exactly Brian envisioned the tune at the time of its writing is something of a mystery, as no contemporaneous recording is known to exist, but there are hints. This was an original song in ABAB form in the key of E, consisting of two verses each in two distinct sections, the “B” section of each verse ending in a refrain with the song’s title. The German oom-pah meter of “Wooden Heart” seems to have bled its way subtly into the type of marching groove Brian envisioned. 

In late June or early July 1963, amid preparation for the Surfer Girl album sessions, Brian noted in his composition book a brief list of the sounds he was planning to arrange for “I’m Waiting for the Day” – “fiddles or organ, bass guitar, timboli, bass, stick perc., singers, guitar.”  That the title was not included in any of several possible track lineups for Surfer Girl indicates that he wasn’t thinking of it as a song for the Beach Boys, but rather an outside production for an unspecified other artist. A production of light timbales and “stick” percussion, two basses (“bass” alone may suggest the acoustic kind), guitar, and either violins or organ chosen interchangeably (maybe for a melodic part) certainly suggests a departure from tracks he was otherwise cutting with the Boys. 

Not a further peep was heard or written about “I’m Waiting for the Day” for months, but in February 1964, a Sea of Tunes lead sheet finally materialized, listing Brian as its sole composer. You’ll know from reading the top of this page that the song was eventually co-credited to Mike Love, whose name did not appear in this initial publication. That’s not to say definitively that Mike didn’t have a hand in creating the song in its first phase, because his name didn’t appear on a number of other Sea of Tunes copyrights from the early-to-mid ‘60s for which he was definitely involved. (There was a small lawsuit about all that.) Reportedly, only about eight words were altered between this 1964 sheet and the final version. 

Jump forward again – the date is now Thursday, March 3, 1966, and two years have passed. Brian, Carl, Al, Bruce and Mike are in Western Studio 3 overdubbing vocals to “I Know There’s an Answer.” Between takes of the chorus, Chuck needs a minute to spool the tape back and reconfigure the tracks. On a separately recorded ¼” reel from the session, Brian can be heard idly chatting to the others about his plans for the rest of the week. “I’m cutting Sunday, cutting right here Sunday,” he says. 

“Sunday in this room?” Carl asks, and Brian explains that he’ll be recording a track for the song he’s just written, “God Only Knows.” Carl calls it a great title.

However, when that session booked for Sunday, March 6 rolled around, Brian was not yet cutting “God Only Knows,” having decided instead to work on a track for “I’m Waiting for the Day” – the lost song he’d written three years earlier. 

If waking “I’m Waiting for the Day” from the dead, conceiving an arrangement, and deciding to record it truly did all occur within those three days, that’s information lost to time. For all we know, this was a regular haunt at Brian’s keyboard, and he’d spent a long time during those intervening years planning the eventual record. Alternatively, he may have all but forgotten about the song – and, suddenly remembering the melody one night in early March 1966, experienced a flash of inspiration outlining the new ways in which it could fit into his latest album cycle only hours before a band of musicians would be waiting at the studio. The latter sounds more like a Brian move. Maybe it was a mix of both. 

Three years – 1963 to 1966 – that’s nothing for a songwriter. But in the heyday of the ‘60s, against the astounding rate of growth in Brian’s music, that span of time somehow manages to feel like an eternity. One can imagine that “I’m Waiting for the Day” would’ve sounded a bit different had it become a Sharon Marie single or turned up on Shut Down Volume 2. Though less harmonically complex than the typical crop of songs Brian wrote for Pet Sounds, the melancholic maturity of its lyric from the finest of Wilson-Love romantic vignettes sits right at home with those penned by Asher. Where it would find creative revelation for the fresh setting would be in its arrangement, which became a model case study in Brian’s fascination with dynamics. 

What he did here was take material that could’ve been played as a fairly straight, uncomplicated ballad and turned it into an exercise in contrasts. Soft sections are set against loud, percussion-driven bombast, hurtling back and forth between extremes. The same musical material is arranged in different variations as it reappears. The structure is also elaborated, adding (presumably) new transition and fadeout sections. 

The core song is essentially a series of verses, each comprised of an eight-bar “A” section and six-bar “B,” the latter containing the title refrain. A simple ballad in its skeletal form, the only non-diatonic moments are a brief bVII chord in “A,” and the emotional iv chord at the fourth bar in the “B” section. After a short intro where we’re hit with a big wall of sound courtesy of the whole ensemble, the first verse quietens down to a soft approach, with the eventual production having no drums or percussion there at all. The “A” section of the second verse has an extra two bars tagged on the front to reintroduce the full-band arrangement, and goes at full tilt before reining back in at “B” (which is handled the same way each time). The third verse is another heavy one, intended as an instrumental break during “A,” with the “B” section reprising lyrics from the second verse. 

To lead into the fade, Brian composed a brilliant three-bar transitional section, reaching into the most overtly Four Freshmen-influenced part of his muse to find the chord voicings. Although intended for strings, it was written in the harmonic language of a classic four-part Beach Boys vocal arrangement. A mostly stationary top part combines with chromatically moving lower voices to expand a basic outline of a I-IV-iv-I progression into something completely different, with the inner and bottommost moving parts reaching deep into non-diatonic territory. Each chord moves further out from the key, until a couple simple chromatic steps in the bottom two voices take us back to the tonic chord. All for three measures, simply to get from E to E. Most pop producers of the time would have considered such a section superfluous, and gone right from “… love again” to the fadeout, but not Brian Wilson in 1966! From there, the fade re-introduces the “heavy” verse arrangement, all on an E chord, featuring an exuberant new vocal melody. 

Tracking Session

Setup

The musicians booked at Western for 2:00pm that Sunday included Al De Lory and Larry Knechtel (keyboards), Carol Kaye (guitar), Ray Pohlman and Lyle Ritz (basses), Jim Gordon (drums), Gary Coleman (timpani), and Jay Migliori, Bill Green, Jim Horn and Leonard Hartman (woodwinds). Not all were familiar faces; this was Brian’s first ever session working alongside Jim Gordon, Hal Blaine’s brilliant protégé gaining a well-regarded name for himself in the Hollywood studio scene. It was also a first appearance for master percussionist Gary Coleman, and for double-reed player Leonard Hartman carrying in his cor anglais (or English horn). Plus, it was the first time Brian had asked Carol Kaye to play an instrument other than bass since “Back Home” and “Run-Around Lover” in June 1963.

A somewhat new face also peered out from behind the board: with Chuck Britz presumably busy, Henry Bowen David was assigned as engineer for this session. It wasn’t by any means Bowen’s first rodeo with Brian – he would often be around to run the tape machine, or handle sweetening or mastering sessions – but this was the first major non-Party Beach Boys instrumental tracking date in Studio 3 ever helmed without Chuck. Bo (as called by his friends and family) was a brilliant engineer, and a beautiful man who actually liked to write detailed information on his tracksheets. As researchers who thrive on things being written down, we love him. 

There are several standout features of the arrangement Brian cooked up here. First, as it was almost a mission statement for him in this era, the percussion section is not anchored around a drum set in the typical rock idiom. Gary Coleman’s booming timpani (tuned to E, F# and B) announce themselves from the start, and they are the primary driver of the rhythmic unit of the track. What a bold statement to start a pop song, with the solo POW, POW, POW, PA-POW-POW of kettle drums! The same pattern is played on root notes throughout all of the forte sections of the song, except for the instrumental third verse, where Brian’s instructions were for Gary to hit only one downbeat at the top of each bar. 

In a way, the regular drums played by Jim Gordon serve as the “effect” piece – there to accent and elaborate, filling in the timpani rhythm with offbeats played together on the snare and floor tom, rather than to provide a back beat. Being new to working with Brian Wilson, Gordon may have been surprised to be handed such a minimal, orchestral part. Though it is basically just two pieces of the kit in action, based on Brian’s typical workflow, it’s likely that Jimmy would’ve loaded his stuff in at the beginning of the session and set up the full drum kit (perhaps with an assistant) long before being told what to play. That allowed some flexibility to try other options, such as when tom fills are introduced a few takes in. 

In the keyboard department, Larry Knechtel plays a prominent Hammond organ rhythm throughout, the classic eighth note chords gluing everything together. Leslie rotation is switched on in the heavier sections and off in the quieter parts, where certain beats are accented to complement the bass line. 

Al De Lory plays a distinct, pounded piano part on the Steinway grand, which had been specially prepared for the occasion. At some point in his learning, Brian discovered that a piano produces a rather delightful staccato effect when its strings are lightly damped by strips of masking tape stuck across them perpendicularly. The damping is not so sharp that it destroys the timbre of the piano, but it tightens the attack and adds a sort of dull thump from the slightly unnatural rebound of the hammers off the constrained strings. This new “taped piano” instrument (in the same way that a “tack piano” becomes an identifiable character of its own) might sound close to a hammered dulcimer, or other tuned percussion along those lines, depending on how it’s used. “I’m Waiting for the Day” is Brian’s first known studio usage of the technique, and eyewitnesses have reported that he liked to get under the lid and stick the masking tape in there himself. The part itself was one carefully prepared and instructed by Brian, consisting of eighth note chords in the right hand with accented beats in the “B” sections, and a rolling, marching rhythm with added left hand bass in the louder “A” sections. 

As noted earlier, Carol Kaye returns to her original guitar niche for the first time in a while here, playing a 12-string electric recorded direct in the control room. When Brian first worked with Carol on a one-off session in the summer of 1963, her typical gig was guitar. Her reputation had then shifted to an in-demand studio bassist by the time their professional paths next crossed, some 18 months later in December 1964 for the recording of “Kiss Me, Baby.” From there, Carol assimilated into Brian’s regular studio crew to play the Fender Precision bass or Danelectro UB-2 six-string bass on a hefty list of Beach Boys tracks, but beginning with this “I’m Waiting for the Day” session in particular, it seems Brian made the discovery that she was carting around a load of other instruments in her car. In the 1966/67 era he started asking her to play all sorts of things on his productions in addition to the basses, like different acoustic and electric guitars, banjo, and mandolin. Here, Carol used a Guild CE-100D semi-hollow archtop, which was custom-modified into a 12-string for studio work. The guitar strums a gentle sixteenth-note rhythm in the full-band sections, padding out the chordal swirl, and adds fills in “B” – a few key chord strums, plus partly-improvised lead licks that she was given room to change and fine tune as the session (and song) progressed. 

Another reason for the personnel shuffle may be that Ray Pohlman, L.A.’s first and most prominent Fender bass player, was dipping his toe back into the full-time studio musician scene after some time away. He’d spent most of 1965 as the musical director for the TV program Shindig!, and peers like Kaye, Knechtel and Joe Osborn had naturally used that opportunity to take away some of his market share in the day-to-day studio world. But for Brian, Ray was his first outside bassist, and an important musical mentor, and that association held a lot of power when it came to assigning parts. For a few months in early 1966, Ray once again edged out anyone else as the most frequently featured electric bassist on Beach Boys sessions. However, he wasn’t used interchangeably with other musicians; when Brian wanted Ray Pohlman on a track, it’s because he was bringing a distinctive sound to the table. 

It’s notable that Brian approached the electric bass on Pet Sounds mostly through the paradigm of it being a tenor voice in his arrangements, with the double bass being the traditional bass voice. To achieve distinct sonic real estate for two basses, Brian would more often than not ask Ray (and Carol, when present) to use a six-string bass. Ray was an early adopter of most new instrument innovations – he had to be, inasmuch as producers loved novelty to set themselves apart. There exists a photo of him from the very early 1960s playing a longhorn Danelectro six-string bass at a session, which he probably bought in 1956 when it hit the market; he and all the old guard, first-line studio player types would’ve invested early in the electric 12-string guitars, electric mandolins, and anything Fender or Mosrite or Danelectro would throw at them. Ray’s Fender Precision bass was from 1957, which was the first year Fender offered the “final” design of the Precision that we still know today. Ray’s family confirm that he once owned a Fender VI for session work, and using this logic, we believe that he likely purchased the instrument not too long after the company made them available in 1961.

The instrument Ray used all across Pet Sounds was verifiably a six-string bass, based on the open strings played between takes, yet there’s corroboration from multiple sources that he was playing something of Fender make, not Danelectro. During the February 17 session for “Good Vibrations” version one, Brian referred to Ray’s axe as the “Fender bass” on tape. On this March 6 session, Bowen David labeled it “F. Bs” on the track sheet. Larry Levine labeled it “FENDER BASS” on the February 14 “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” track sheet and “FENDER” on the April 9 “Good Vibrations” version two track sheet. Ergo, it’s a VI.

Though the Danelectro basses and the Fender VI do not sound worlds apart, the Fender is just a better all-around instrument – much more solidly constructed, and with more tonal variety available to the user. Danelectro’s branch of six-string basses were best suited to one excellent thing: twangy, palm-muted tic-tac parts. And when a track really called for that, only the Dano would do for producers. However, the common narrative that the Fender VI wasn’t used at all in L.A. studios is false. Based on light photo evidence (e.g. Glen Campbell on TV), plus some rock-solid narrative provenance (e.g., Al Casey’s Fender VI’s whereabouts are known), we know that the union musicians went for both. Thus, it is not unreasonable to believe that Ray would’ve generally preferred the Fender VI in situations where the Dano’s schtick was not called for. Furthermore, Brian’s familiarity with his own Fender VI would’ve made it a safe choice. The Ray P. bass seemed to occupy a distinct textural color in Brian’s mind during this period; when Carol Kaye or Bill Pitman brought out the Danelectro UB-2, it would often be recorded direct, because that tone just seemed to come across well. Meanwhile, all of Ray’s six-string bass parts were without exception amplified. 

Of the two basses on “I’m Waiting for the Day,” Lyle Ritz’s upright is the deep anchor. An eighth note walking line in the initial forte “A” sections, descending major scales in the instrumental break, and a simple underlying rhythm in “B” precede an arco solo under the bridge to the fadeout section, which Brian would later use as a guide for the string overdub. Ray’s Fender VI sits above the double bass in the frequency range and travels all over the neck, exploiting both ends of the instrument’s functionality. He plays a higher response line to Lyle’s parts in “A,” not unlike the drums’ role in relation to the timpani. During the soft first verse, where the upright lays out, Ray has a jagged, angular part which functions more like a countermelody than a bass line. In “B,” electric and upright bass are in unison. His tumbling scales in the instrumental verse are played high up on the neck and heavily muted, a percussion-like tic-tac part without the twang. 

The cor anglais (or English horn) mentioned above was not making its debut on a Beach Boys record, nor were flutes, though here they really do come into their own. While Brian had explored flutes and piccolos before, this is the first time he’s committed to using them in a way we might describe as “flautistically” – that is, really exploiting the things about a flute that make it a flute, and showing off what it can do. In “B,” we get a sweeping countermelody played all’unisono by Bill, Jim, and Jay that sits right in the concert flute’s money register, elegantly wrapping around the vocal to tug on the heartstrings. A repeated riff is played in the bombastic sections, locking in rhythmically with the timpani. The combination of the overlapping percussion rhythms and unison flute line gives the whole track a marching band flavor; if Brian had anything at all like this in mind when he originally wrote the tune, it’s no wonder “Be True to Your School” came shortly after. 

Leonard Hartman’s cor anglais is deployed somewhat conservatively, gently shadowing an octave below the flutes in their appearances, which is exactly how Brian had used the bass flute in the coda to “Caroline, No.” The notable featured appearance is in the first verse, where Hartman doubles the lead vocal melody sort of like it’s an opera aria. That whole gentle opening verse passage was crafted to be an extremely sparse moment, featuring only organ, six-string bass, and English horn. As tape rolled, Brian would modify what went into the section and various other elements of the track. 

This is an arrangement that the musicians were able to pick up quickly, and once tape started rolling, it mostly became a case of having them play the song over and over (capturing many complete takes) to refine performance and make adjustments. 

Inputs coming into the board included: 

1 – drums (one overhead, no need for a kick mic) (sent to tape delay, then to EMT plate) 
2 – timpani (sent to chamber)
3 – double bass 
4 – electric six-string bass amplifier (sent to tape delay, then to EMT plate) 
5 – grand piano (sent to tape delay, then to EMT plate) 
6 – organ speaker (sent to chamber) 
7 – flutes 
8 – cor anglais 
9 – electric 12-string guitar – direct 

Once they’d gotten set up, Bowen routed the wind instruments to track 1, recorded dry. Brian’s more common preference for avoiding reverb effects on flutes and saxophones etc. may come as a surprise to some, but the clear trend is that he usually liked to let their natural timbre and positioning around a microphone do all the talking. Ray’s bass and Jim’s drums went to track 2, which was cumulatively sent to a tape echo with light reverb for a satisfying slap trail on the staccato tones. Since other microphones in the room were picking up a lot of presence and detail from Jimmy Gordon’s kit, it only needed to be mixed quite quietly on its own track. Onto track 3 went the timpani, organ, taped piano, 12-string guitar, and Lyle’s bass, plus a reverb chamber return from the timpani and organ. The dry, direct guitar signal is another completely unfiltered sound that might not stand out to the ear as being such when heard with the ensemble. Track 4 was intentionally left unused throughout the session as Brian planned to overdub strings. 

Recording – Basic Track

Bowen started rolling tape mid-way through a rehearsal take, capturing a brief section of the first verse before stopping the machine and starting again near the end of the second verse, recording the rest of the performance from there. Outside of a mistake on the bass from Ray, the band are already sounding very together. Some discussion can be heard under the playing; Leonard Hartman remarks “Comes right in there!” to the flute players. As soon as the song reaches Lyle’s arco break, Brian interrupts the rehearsal to start going for some real takes. 

“It’s fine. Okay, here we go, let’s make it, uh…” he begins, before trailing off, making a strange groaning noise, and proceeding to clear his throat in this outrageous, violent, animalistic roar right down the talkback microphone, as if spirits are being ripped out of his body by exorcism. “Excuse me, this is called ‘I’m Waiting’,” Brian says without skipping a beat. 

Tape stopped and rolled again when Jim Gordon was ready to count in the song. The ensuing take 1 is played completely through to the fade with only a few noticeable differences to the final master. The flute riff played during the intro is harmonized instead of unison, but in all other sections they play together above the English horn. During the “B” sections, both the organ and piano play stabbing accented beats with exaggerated dynamics, almost menacing in feel against the quiet backdrop of the woodwinds and basses; reverb increases with volume, exacerbating the effect. Knechtel adds a short glissando into each “heavy” verse but not into the intro or tag. Jim Gordon’s drum part has yet to include the specific fill he will be given at the end of each “A” section, and in fact, his rack tom is only played in the fadeout, where Jim doubles Gary Coleman’s timpani. Lyle’s solo is played at the same tempo as the track, and when the rest of the band come back for the tag, they rejoin all at once – chords from the organ, piano, and strummed 12-string guitar, interlocking bass and drum parts, and woodwinds all playing together. It’s clear that Brian hadn’t quite yet figured out how the fadeout would work at this point, which may be why he stopped this take only a few bars in. “Okay, let’s make take two right now, okay?” 

Again, tape stops and continues for a brief section of the first verse; it seems that a few fragments like this were recorded as a playback test throughout the session. During the recording break, Brian made a few changes to the arrangement. He gave Gary a timpani fill to play into the first “B” section, and asked the woodwind players to just play the opening line in unison, the way they do during the second verse, instrumental third verse, and fade. 

When tape resumes again, Brian re-slates take 2. All goes well until the final “B” section, where Brian realizes he wants something different from the keyboards. “Okay, hold it. Pianos and organs,” he starts to say, before realizing there’s only one piano. “Pianos,” he chides himself. “Al De Lorys and Knechtels.” Tape stops before he can continue, but it’s clear that this is when Brian asked for a change in the “B” rhythm to a new figure, set to the cadence of “Here Comes the Bride.” Because he now wanted some tape slap on the piano, an engineering change was made here as well, as Bowen routed it across to track 2 with the six-string bass and drums to share in the delay effect. A combination of Al’s vigorous pounding in the lower register, the staccato taped strings, and the extra loop of tape between the microphone and the four-track make the piano especially dirty and warm. 

An unslated ‘test’ take follows with the new track allocations, the arrangement also now featuring an organ glissando from Knechtel into the heavier verses, played with one hand while the other starts up the Leslie, resulting in that slow, magical swirl. This take made it to the arco bridge before being stopped by Brian: “Okay, we gotta do one more and then we’ll take our fifteen [minute break], alright? Let’s go one more from the top.” The following take 3 again made it to the arco section, and Brian retracted his previous statement: “It’s fine, I gotta do one more before we take it [the break], okay? One more, please.” 

Take 4 is taken slightly faster, and Hartman gets slightly behind the beat in the first verse before hitting a bad note and bringing it to a halt. Take 5 is complete, despite another sloppy solo performance by Hartman in the opening verse. It should be noted that Carol’s 12-string guitar playing differs from take to take, as Brian didn’t have an exact idea of what he wanted and gave her freedom to improvise much of the parts – if she landed on something good, it’d get locked in. Her rhythmic strumming on this attempt puts more emphasis on the upbeats, almost sounding like a ukulele. The musicians stop before the arco bridge, knowing by this point that Brian will want to record that as a separate pickup. “Okay, let’s take a break,” he says over the talkback. Bill Green agrees.  

With the band having scooted out of the studio for their 15-minute smoke break and then scooted back in again, tape begins rolling on another rehearsal that doesn’t capture the introductory percussion bars. As the musicians play, Brian asks Ray if his bass is turned down, but Ray reveals that the microphone was moved at some point during the break. With the problem addressed, Brian immediately calls for a take. Realizing that no one stopped to give it a proper slate, Bowen noted this one down as another ‘test’, although it was complete to the arco bridge. It again is played well, and Jim Gordon has finally been given his distinctive tom fill that ends each “A” section. De Lory’s piano is now played an octave down in the heavy sections, rattling and distorting with the tape mute. Lyle starts to play his solo but Brian stops him: “We’ll do that in a second. To the top again.” 

Take 6 is tried way too fast, and Jim gets twisted in his own part after accidentally counting the band in at breakneck speed. Brian stops him and demonstrates the tempo that he’s looking for. Another pass (still considered take 6) is counted in right away, and at the fourth bar of the first verse, Al De Lory improvises a great little countermelody lick on the piano. One can almost hear Brian’s good ear perk up as he excitedly reaches for the talkback button to address the part: “Hey, that was outta sight! I mean it really was, how did you play that?” 

“I don’t know” is Al De Lory’s response, causing various musicians in the room to laugh. Carol mimics the part on guitar as Brian holds down the talkback mic: “How did you play it? (sings) Da da da da…” De Lory tries to remember the notes and re-learn his own idea. Leonard Hartman chuckles and tells him, “Outta sight, dude.”  

Tape stops and resumes rolling as Brian says “…mistake, Al. Okay, let’s make it again, take seven please.” Al De Lory’s piano lick is properly incorporated into the following take, now having become an intentional part of the first verse arrangement. A cool buzzy rattle is heard on one of its lower strings. Carol’s guitar tone has been changed considerably as well, likely due to some shuffling of settings and instructions from Brian within the booth that aren’t heard on tape. The wind section is also subject to some rejigging; the flutes have a different line in the instrumental verse, now performing an airily playful variation on the vocal melody up in their higher register. Following that, Hartman doubles part of the eventual vocal melody in the final refrain: “I’m waiting for the day when you can…” After the complete (up to the bridge) take 7, Brian comments, “That’s gonna be really great. Al, that was really a great mistake, I mean it.” Although Brian continually calls the part a “mistake” throughout the session, Al’s line is really something that was intentionally improvised (and immediately forgotten afterwards) rather than a line that was played incorrectly or by accident. 

When tape resumes rolling after a short break, Hartman is in the middle of a question about his new part: “…right place in the-?” 

Brian interrupts, “Yeah, perfect.” 

“No kidding, I thought it felt wrong.” Without a reference point for a known melody, the various instrumental pieces of Brian’s arrangements often “felt” wrong in that way to musicians and observers who didn’t have proper context for how they would later fit in. Take 8 is complete up to the bridge, but not a perfect performance. Some of Carol’s guitar fills don’t quite land where she’d like them to, but the ideas in the fills themselves are fantastic, and from here, it’s just a matter of playing it a few more times. Brian instructs Gary to “play hard” before take 9. After the first few bars, Brian calls for another take: “Let’s have those first two BOM BOM, more of definite things.” 

Gary plays hard as requested at the top of take 10, but Ray and Leonard miss their cue in the first verse, resulting in the take breaking down. But Brian really liked the timpani intro: “Perfect – if you can play it like that, we’ll have it. All the way.” Bowen noted this false start as having a “good open.” Take 11 begins with the same power on the timpani, but Al doesn’t play his new piano part in the verse. “Wait a minute, Al, I think you forgot to do that part,” Brian tells him. “Great kettle thing – that’s what we needed in this, that’s perfect.” 

Take 12 doesn’t get to the first verse before Brian stops it. The following take 13 is complete and nearly perfect, but Brian wants to do another, knowing that the feel may be slightly better if the band just play it one more time. They do, and it is, making take 14 the master take of the main body of the song. But there were still the slow bridge and fadeout sections to deal with; Brian left the booth and went into the studio to work more closely with the musicians on these pickups takes. 

With everyone still in place with their instruments, tape began rolling again as Bowen slates “insert for fade.” On the first attempt, Lyle accidentally bows two strings at once, causing Brian to laugh. “Let’s have laughing in the background,” he jokes. “It’s gotta get a little faster than that,” he then tells Lyle, singing his part to him. The next attempt gets to the point of the band coming back in, but Brian stops them, now having a better idea for the fadeout. “Let’s do it like this! When you come to that B, let’s have two bars of the kettle and that B, okay?” suggesting a reprise of the timpani intro from the beginning of the song. 

“Arco B?” Lyle asks. 

“Yeah, arco B. Arco B and kettle,” Brian confirms. 

The next attempt (considered “insert take 2”) gets a perfect Lyle bass solo, and that extent of it was marked down for splicing into the master – but when the rest of the band come in, Jim Gordon makes a mistake on the drums and Al De Lory enters a bar early on piano. “Okay, we’ll do something different,” Brian directs. “Just the B, here we go,” now picking it up from where the timpani comes in over Lyle’s sustained B note. 

He stops another un-slated attempt early on with new ideas. “What are you doing now? Let’s do it again.” 

“Two bars of smashing and then us,” Jim answers. 

Brian then points to the timpani and explains, “The whole group will do what he’s doing. Can you do that? Organ, guitars, and uh… well, actually, that’s about it, isn’t it? Carol, piano, and Larry. Do what he’s doing. You know his beat? Let’s do it again. Letter ‘B.’ I mean, the note B!” 

What Brian’s asking for, in his own way, is for the chordal instruments to play the same rhythm as the timpani. He counts in a take, and they all give it a shot, Ray Pohlman included. The band sort of awkwardly fade themselves in over the timpani, bass and organ stabs. Realizing that the idea doesn’t quite work, Brian has a new idea, with just Larry’s organ doubling Jim’s three drum hits rather than anyone doubling Gary’s timpani. “You hear that? He goes like this – DUM. DO DO. And then we’ll go. Okay, double time again. Let’s try it. Here we go, arco B and kettle!”  

Brian wanders back into the booth during the practice, still not quite satisfied. The nervous energy is palpable, as the clock is nearing closer to 5:00pm, when the musicians (besides Lyle) will all have to leave. The producer mans the talkback: “Ray, you’re gonna go… hit an E note with that drum thing,” he instructs. Ray demonstrates, but Brian gets another idea – “Ray, in fact, go like this,” and sings the descending scale part from the instrumental verse, which Ray instantly comprehends. “And the rest of the group is doing the drum thing. Here we go, let’s try it. Arco B and insert three, kettle.” 

Insert take 3 has an accidental gain ride on the organ, but Brian has finally arrived at the arrangement that works for him. “Okay, let’s make it again, one more time. It’s gonna be great. Hit those, piano and…” 

“He’s talking, honey,” Marilyn warns Brian from in the booth. 

Brian: “Huh?” 

Marilyn: “Lyle’s talking.” 

Brian: “Oh, Lyle. Yeah, Lyle?” 

“This should be it, right? Lyle asks. “Or we’re in overtime.”  

“Yeah, this is it,” Brian assures him. “Let’s make it.” Pickup take 4 was indeed it, and after enough fadeout material was played, Brian pushed the talkback button to thank the musicians. From here, most of the group was sent home (except for leader Lyle Ritz), while Bowen David spliced the master take sections together directly on the ½”  four-track reel: take 14, pickup take 2 (for the arco bass section), and pickup take 4 (from “arco B and kettle”). 

Recording – Overdub

For the overdub, Brian kept Lyle on as anointed leader/contractor for the next three-hour session block from 5:00pm to 8:00pm and called in six more string players from Sid Sharp’s collective: violinists Sid Sharp (of course), William Kurasch, Leonard Malarsky and Ralph Schaeffer, violist Harry Hyams, and cellist Justin DiTullio. Perhaps Brian had initially planned for Lyle to add another part here, but ultimately only the six new players were used on the overdub. 

It was a couple of short passages in the song being sweetened, coming in as a punch-in during the third verse – one of those admirable demonstrations of restraint that characterize a lot of the arranging work on Pet Sounds. While Brian could’ve had the six fiddle guys adorning the whole song, it wouldn’t feel as impactful to the listener as their late entrance at an unexpected moment. ‘Dynamics’ is again the key concept through which all of Brian’s ideas are filtered. Bowen opted to record the strings completely dry, overdubbing the parts onto the open track 4. 

Beginning at the “B” section of the third verse, a six-part harmony involving the whole string section pads out the basic track, with a moving melodic line split between the viola and the lowest of the four violins giving it some rippling elegance. Once again, Brian drafts an unbalanced group, preferring to sentence the violin players to a life where access to the upper two strings of their instruments is strictly prohibited, cramming them and Harry Hyams’ viola into a tight, almost claustrophobic voicing structure above Justin DiTullio’s cello. 

The strings are tacet for two bars during the final refrain (stopping where the English horn doubles the vocal), and then return for the transitional bridge atop Lyle’s lonely bass solo, where they transform those single notes into rich, warm chords with all of the intended color and motion. As mentioned earlier, this section is basically a Four Freshmen vocal harmony pastiche interpreted by strings, so it was composed with four voices in mind; only two violins, one viola, and one cello are employed in those four bars while the other two violin players lay out. The bass is obviously a fifth voice created in the translation of Brian’s piano ideas to an arrangement, and the cello plays the exact same line an octave above. Their final chord serves to smooth over the (already smooth) splice between pickup takes into the tag. 

Vocal Sessions

Western

Work continued on “I’m Waiting for the Day” two days later, picking things up at Western on Tuesday, March 8. Although we know in hindsight that the Beach Boys would soon move the album’s vocal sessions to Columbia – thereby opening up eight tracks to play with – Brian’s workflow gives us solid indications that he originally intended to complete “I’m Waiting for the Day” using four tracks.  

Potentially as far back as 1963, Brian had devised a simple vocal arrangement for the song which called for three parts behind a doubled lead: two moving backing harmonies, and a doo-wop inspired bass vocal. All of this could’ve been done live to a single track back then, perhaps simultaneously to a lead vocal, but in 1966, Brian was looking for more precise control over individual performances. Separate tracks would be needed; one for the two harmonies, and one just for the bass voice. He would also need two tracks for the doubled leads, and a track for the instruments. That’s five, so clearly, compromises had to be baked into the plan. 

The backing tracks for “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times” and “I’m Waiting for the Day” were both bounced down onto track 4 of the same ½” reel that day. But – and here’s where it gets weird – instead of doing the normal, Capitol-money-funded thing and grabbing a new tape, which the Beach Boys could definitely afford, whoever was engineering at the time (unknown if Bowen or Chuck holds the blame) decided to recycle a used reel off the shelf from a previous United-Western project. In this case, it was basic tracking outtakes for the Everly Brothers’ “(You Got) The Power of Love,” recorded at the studio in February and then presumably left at arms’ reach for a deviant engineer to repurpose as he saw fit. Now, that wouldn’t present an issue if everything worked as it was supposed to… except that the erase head on the tape machine was either a bit dirty or misaligned. The resulting effect is that when the two Beach Boys songs were dubbed onto this tape, it didn’t completely eliminate the Everly Brothers’ recording. Bass, guitars, drums, and especially the high frequencies of a tambourine can be heard ever so slightly underneath track 4, the one containing the B.B. backing tracks. It isn’t all that noticeable. The noise is however a major presence throughout track 3, where the Boys overdubbed vocals. Listen carefully to the mono mixes of either tune and you’ll be sure to detect the tambourine. “(You Got) The Power of Love” is a good song, but probably best heard without another playing over it. 

Sonic anomalies out of the way, let’s talk about another unusual feature of this “I’m Waiting for the Day” bounce. To free up more tracks for overdubs, Brian and Carl went out into the studio and sang a backing vocal part live while the instrumental track was being transferred, all combined to a mono sum on track 4 of the second generation four-track tape – a two-part “ahh-ahh-ahh, be-doobie-doo” in the heavy sections, Brian above and Carl below, essentially a variation on the main flute riff. This figure starts at bar three of the second verse, bar five of the third verse, and bar five of the tag. It was sunk deep into the orchestration to preserve a big sound. 

On track 3 (the one full of Everly Brothers noise), Mike overdubbed a glorious doo-wop bass vocal in the same sections, a big “DUH-DUH-DUH” that nobody else could pull off with such zest. The vocal was recorded with a strong tape echo return: one repeat, staggered about 28ms, and mixed only about 5db quieter than the original voice. The result sounds like two bass vocalists bouncing against each other. 

“Beautiful, dumb background parts,” Bruce Johnston said. “The yin-yang works great there. The ‘doops’ and the ‘ahhs.’ It’s kind of like having all the scruffy characters that are in ‘Oliver’ show up at the Royal Albert Hall. They don’t belong but it fits.” 

Tracks 1 and 2 remained open for doubled lead vocals. It would’ve been entirely possible to finish the production on this tape, but probably because Brian needed additional tracks for his other, more vocally complex tunes and was intending to move locations anyway, progress at Western stopped here. 

Columbia I

Another couple of days later, on Thursday, March 10, “I’m Waiting for the Day” was one of four songs Brian took to Columbia and copied onto a 1” eight-track reel so he could continue working under more flexible conditions. With track 4 (instruments + ‘ahhs’) and track 3 (‘duh-duhs’) filled, six were left to complete what stood to be a fairly simple production. It was one of the titles overdubbed to completion during that first day at CBS, with veteran engineer Bill Brittan behind the board and possibly Pete Romano operating the tape machine. 

Brian selected Mike and himself as the two lead vocalists, set to trade off in different sections of the song. There’s a chicken and egg scenario here: Did Mike become a co-writer because he ended up redrafting lyrics when called to sing the lead in 1966? Or did he sing the lead because he’d already co-written the song in 1963? We don’t know. He’s never publicly spoken about his participation. 

The parts given to Mike included the gentle first verse “A” passage and all of the “B” sections, which sat comfortably at the higher end of his baritone range. Brian would take on the bombastic, shouty parts – the heavy second verse “A” section and the tag, with Mike adding little answering vocals beside him. Although all of this could’ve been accomplished on four-track without incurring further generation loss, it just made sense to take advantage of the available eight-track machine because of the lead-switching configuration. It was a comfort decision, allowing space to breathe and think about each verse without worrying about precise punch-in and punch-out marks. 

Both singers stood around the same microphone somewhere in the darkness of the big Studio A. Even while not singing, Brian stayed put with Mike and produced his vocal from the floor. Of note is that the vocals from this session have a particularly bright, brittle sonic profile, hiked up around the 3khz to 6khz range with scooped lows. Whether caused by equalization, or a hard driven preamp, or maybe even a tube starting to go off, it appears to have been pushed as an intentional effect to allow voices to cut through the powerful instrumental backing. 

With a surplus of open tracks, the engineer used space on the tape here messily, jumping between different channels to record each verse and its double at random selection. Track sheet notations written down that day looked like this: 

1  Vocal M+B 4 
2  Vocal MikeBryan 2 
3  VOCAL #1 
4  ORCHESTRA 
5  Vocal MikeBryan 1   Mike Bryan 
6  Vocal Bryan Mike 
7 
8  Vocal MikeBryan 3 

An order of hopping about is implied by the numbers that isn’t reflected in what’s actually on the tape. Because only fragments of parts from this session were kept (we’ll get to re-recordings later), it’s very difficult to analyze the exact original layout of the multitrack. That doesn’t matter too much; what we do know is Mike overdubbed his lead vocal in the whole first verse and doubled it, then overdubbed his lead in the second verse elsewhere and doubled that (track 6), then overdubbed his lead in the third verse (track 8) and doubled that (probably track 1). Mike handled the ballad parts well, if a little unnaturally, somehow. Like an Inuit wearing a Stetson. There’s nothing wrong with that picture – might even look chic – but you know something about it doesn’t seem to match up. 

During a gap on track 8, Mike and Brian can be heard riffing with each other while waiting to sing. 

Mike: “Might as well hand over your coupon book, baby.” 
Brian: “I’m gonna cash in my bonds.” 
Mike: “That’s the last yellow coupon you ever gonna tear out, bitch!” 

God knows what they’re talking about. A great example of spontaneity occurs right before Mike sings the third verse, where Brian mutters the lyric to him, “hurt you bad,” then immediately corrects himself to “hurt you then,” and Mike delivers the line a split second later. 

Brian’s lead vocal in the first part of the second verse came next (onto track 2). He used his forceful ‘rocker’ voice here, like that of “You’re So Good to Me” and “Hang on to Your Ego.” After the line, “It made me think about him and that you still loved him so,” Mike interjects a quick, doo-wop-flavored “Baby, don’t you know” answer. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo. When Brian doubled his lead on another track, Mike did not double that appearance with it. 

In the tag, Brian and Mike engage in a fantastic call-and-response round – Brian belting at the top of his range, Mike being his finger-wagging hype man. 

Brian: “You didn’t think –” 
Mike: “No!” 
Brian: “That I could sit around and let him work?” 
Mike: “Ha!” 
Brian: “You didn’t think –” 
Mike: “No!” 
Brian: “That I could sit around and watch him take you?” 
Mike: “Uh-uh!” 

It appears that these fade vocals were not double-tracked at the time. Or if they were, the second layer was excluded when Brian dubbed the song from eight-track to mono before the close of the session. This March 10 version of “I’m Waiting for the Day” was considered a completed master. On March 12, Brian brought the tape to Western, where Chuck spliced it onto a compilation reel of then-final mono mixes for the album. [Where to hear: The Pet Sounds Sessions disc 3 track 16, Pet Sounds 50th Anniversary Edition disc 3 track 11.]  

Columbia II

Like many of the project’s songs, it didn’t take long for Brian to conclude that “I’m Waiting for the Day” could be done better. He brought Mike back to Columbia for another session later in March – no date was written down, but it must’ve taken place while the Beach Boys were in L.A. between March 20 and 30. 

The brittle EQ’d vocal sound bit the dust, suggesting it may have been one of Brian’s misgivings with the first mix. New parts would be recorded with the natural, warmly limited tone of an AKG C12. First, Mike re-recorded all of his lead vocal sections, all done on track 2 and doubled on track 1. His performance sounded damn near identical to the original go-around (maybe slightly lighter and smoother), but Brian might’ve thought it was worth the effort for sonic reasons, and/or to tweak a few phrasings. 

Brian left his second verse lead vocal (with the Mike cameo) on track 2 intact, apparently being happy enough with that performance from the previous session, but he decided to re-record the double of it, which went onto track 6. The difference in EQ between voices makes for a compelling, sharp blend. Continuing on track 6, Brian wholly redid the tag vocal, with Mike only adding his “No!” “Uh-uh!” “No!” parts during the first couple of rounds; Brian then doubled the lead alone on track 2. Although a powerful, exciting performance, Brian does make some… interesting moaning and groaning noises between his breaths. Maybe it gave him energy. “That’s good enough,” he says cheerily at the end. 

Finally, sensing that the single-tracked Brian/Carl ‘ahhs’ locked to the band weren’t strong enough on their own, Brian and Mike doubled them on track 5 of the tape. While Brian sang a dual with himself, Mike doubled Carl’s part. This was a one-take affair to get down; between sections, Brian can be heard reminding his cousin that “at the fade it stays in one key, over and over.” When the third verse starts, he remembers, “Oh wait, it comes in here too, second time – second half of this part. I’ll show you where. Ready?” Mike responds the affirmative “Mm-hm,” and they get it perfect on the first pass.  

The completed song was then mixed to mono for a second time, with Brian himself scrawling the title and “MASTER” on the box. [Note: This mix has not been released as of writing.] 

This mono master stuck, for a while. It was spliced off the reel to side 1, track 5 of the Pet Sounds album assembly on April 4, which, as we’ve discussed in previous essays, was considered done and dusted enough to have a “master” lacquer cut. When Brian noticed that, actually, it didn’t really feel done, and there were a few bits of dust he’d missed, “I’m Waiting for the Day” was one of the tunes brought back out for workshopping. 

Columbia III

The clear thing dissatisfying Brian, it seems, was the Inuit in the Stetson. Mike’s vocal and the whole trade-off dynamic just weren’t gelling with the song, and Brian figured he could do it better himself. Documentation for the final vocal additions is non-existent, but we can infer from contextual evidence (i.e. the reel the song was re-mixed onto) that Brian probably recorded his new parts on April 13, after polishing up “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times.” 

Brian’s call here was the right one. He overdubbed replacement lead vocals to the softer verses on tracks 1 and 2, delivering a delicate, emotive, crystal-clear performance that considerably elevates the whole piece. It’s difficult not to talk in hyperbole around much of Pet Sounds, but this one stands out among Brian’s most refined singing of the 1960s, a real return to the “Please Let Me Wonder” voice. No limiter was used for heightened detail. The contrast to his compressed, aggressive vocal delivery in the heavier sections seems to feel more effective coming from the same narrator. A perfect melodic capstone is added in the third verse, where at the words “…that’s all done,” Brian reaches up to a high B and dovetails down, with the melisma on “done” harmonizing a third above the moving viola line. The second vocal layer (recorded a little quieter than the first) is also some extremely precise double-tracking work from Brian, about as good as it can get; he was clearly on his game that day in the studio. In a probable technical quirk, both vocals in the third verse were combined on track 2 when he doubled it. 

Brian apparently didn’t love his wonder of a vocal on the song, at least after living with it. “Vocally, I thought I sounded a little bit weird in my head,” he said later. “That’s the one cut off the album I didn’t really like that much. But, you know, it’s okay, it’s not a case of liking or not liking it; it was an appropriate song, a very, very positive song. I just didn’t like my voice on that particular song.” 

The resident engineer (either Valentin or Brittan) and Brian finally took “I’m Waiting for the Day” to a third mono mixdown. They didn’t bother to duck the track with the Everly Brothers bleed whenever Mike wasn’t singing his bass part; Brian either liked the weird rattling noise at the edge of hearing, didn’t notice it, or didn’t mind. Mix #2 was removed from the album master reel on April 17 and mix #3 took its place. 

NOTE: The engineers who worked on the Pet Sounds  sessions at Columbia are known by name and handwriting, but in the case of this song, we do not have complete information about which of them helmed which of the vocal sessions. Hence Brittan, Valentin and Romano are all named in the personnel list at the top of the page, but the engineers for each recording date listed below may be noted as ‘unknown’ at certain times.

ANOTHER NOTE: Mark Linett’s 1996 stereo mix sources the first-generation four-track tape for a stereo instrumental track, bypassing Brian’s mono composite of the instruments on the eight-track dub. Because of this, Brian and Carl’s background part (recorded as it was mixed with the track) is not included in the stereo mix, and as a consequence, the personnel list for the stereo mix is different: no Carl Wilson. 

 

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Sources

Based on original research by John Brode, Will Crerar, Joshilyn Hoisington and Craig Slowinski.

Special thanks for additional research: Steve Bonilla, for the connection to “Wooden Heart”; Cameron Mott, for uncovering a session date in KRLA Beat.

Tapes and associated documentation from Brother Records, Capitol Records, and private collection.

AFM Local 47 Contracts 247436, 247435.

Carol Deck, “One Day on the Beat,” KRLA Beat, April 9, 1966.

Brian Wilson, Bruce Johnston – interviews conducted by David Leaf, appear in “The Making of Pet Sounds,” The Pet Sounds Sessions, Capitol Records, 1997.

Andrew Doe, www.bellagio10452.com.

Ian Rusten, www.beachboysgigs.com.