Heroes and Villains

About Heroes and Villains

"Heroes and Villains" is a song written and produced by Brian Wilson with words by Van Dyke Parks, recorded by the American rock band the Beach Boys. Envisioned as a three-minute music comedy, it was the follow-up single to the group's "Good Vibrations" (1966) and intended as the centerpiece to the unfinished album Smile. After the album was shelved, the song was rearranged and issued as a single in July 1967 with "You're Welcome" as the B-side. It charted at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. Two months later, it was placed as the opening track to the studio album Smiley Smile. Parks said that he modeled the lyrics after "El Paso" (1959) and denied a popular theory claiming that "Heroes and Villains" was a song about the Vietnam War. Though the lyrics are distinctly Western with some allusions to the American Indian genocides, then-wife Marilyn Wilson said that Brian meant the "heroes" and "villains" to represent those in his life. Like "Good Vibrations", "Heroes and Villains" was produced using the same unorthodox method of recording a surplus of interchangeable musical sections at multiple Hollywood recording studios. Only during its final production stages would the song then be reduced and assembled into a coherent structure. This proved difficult for Wilson, who grew increasingly frustrated with the virtually limitless number of possible song edits. Bandmate Al Jardine later expressed dissatisfaction with the final composite, calling it "a pale facsimile" of Wilson's original vision, and believed that he had "underproduced" the song at the last minute. Jimi Hendrix dismissed the single as a "psychedelic barbershop quartet". more »