The Beach Boys song that features Paul McCartney playing the carrot
If you’re ever in Vienna and one of the concert halls is emanating a particularly brothy smell, The Vegetable Orchestra may well be performing inside. Their goal is the “exploration and refinement of performable vegetable music“. And they are, as far as I’m aware, the only band in history who offer audiences a fresh bowl of vegetable soup at the end of their shows. You get the feeling that Paul McCartney might be a fan.
After all, The Beatle is perhaps the most famous vegetarian since Adolf Hitler, and he pioneered the use of edible matter as a musical instrument when the sound of him chomping carrots and celery was deployed by The Beach Boys in their track ‘Vega-Tables’ for the ill-fated album Smiley Smile. It might sound like a laughable lark, but it typified the development of sonic exploration that was occurring in the 1960s.
Prior to this, the Beach Boys had split the atom in the most beautiful way with Pet Sounds, perhaps McCartney’s favourite album. It coupled the possibilities of stereo-sound with Baroque techniques to create a new array of layering that could shift the pitch of pop music seamlessly. Owing to its success, Brian Wilson was profoundly upbeat, stating: “Our new album will be better than Pet Sounds.”
He even ventured to add: “It will be as much an improvement over Sounds as that was over Summer Days.”
Thus, when Smile entered the studio and set about incorporating well over 50 hours of sound fragments into a 12-track LP intended to only be around half an hour, it seemed doomed from the start. Much has been made of the issues that the band were facing and Brian Wilson’s mental health in the years that followed, but 50 hours into 0.5 simply doesn’t go, especially not for a band built upon the doo-wop simplicity of harmonies and beach-bound atmosphere. It all simply proved too much, and Smile was shelved, never to be finished.
The chomping of McCartney on the utterly daft ‘Vega-Tables’ stands as a sorry reminder of a trip too far. Its heart was in the right place; as Brian Wilson recently stated: “I want to turn people on to vegetables, good natural food, organic food. Health is an important element in spiritual enlightenment. But I do not want to be pompous about it, so we will engage in a satirical approach.” But its head was not.
Nevertheless, McCartney’s presence showcases the brilliant communal spirit of art in the counterculture age. As Al Jardine recalled: “The night before a big tour, I was out in the studio recording the vocal [for ‘Vega-Tables’] when, to my surprise, Paul McCartney walked in and joined Brian at the console. And, briefly, the two most influential musical Geminis in the world had a chance to work together. I remember waiting for long periods of time between takes to get to the next section or verse. Brian [seemed to have] lost track of the session. Paul would come on the talkback and say something like ‘Good take, Al’.”
And McCartney himself told his website: ”Yeah, that is true, yeah! I mean it was wild and wacky days, you know, and I just went round to the studio because they invited me. I just thought it would be fun to sit there and watch them record, ’cause I’m a big fan. And so I was there, and then it was, I think, Brian who came over and said, ‘Oh Paul, got a favour to ask: would you mind recording something?’ I thought, ‘Oh, no! But great, I could do that’. Oh God, I’m gonna be singing on a Beach Boys record or something, you know!”
Continuing, he added: ”I got a bit kind of intimidated and thought, ‘Okay, here goes nothing’. And they said, ‘Well, what we want you to do is go in there and just munch!’ …Well, I can do that! So, if you hear somebody munching celery, that’s me!”
