Look (Song for Children)

"Look" was one of the earliest pieces recorded during the Smile sessions. Musicologist Philip Lambert speculated that some parts of the music possibly evolved from one of the riffs in "Good Vibrations".[1]

The instrumental track for "Look" was recorded on August 12, 1966 at Western studio. It was titled "Look" on the tape box, but on the AFM sheet, it was logged as "Untitled Song #1" with a runtime of 2:16. The instrumentation featured upright bass, vibraphones, keyboard, French horn, guitars, organs, trombone and woodwind. Take 20 was marked as best.[2]

Capitol Records documentation suggests that, on October 13, all six Beach Boys were involved in a vocal overdubbing session for the track, now logged as "I Ran (Formerly Untitled Song #1)" with a 3:10 runtime. Writing in The Smile Sessions liner notes, Craig Slowinski said that "a tape from that session has not turned up in a search of the Capitol and BRI vaults."[3]

In November, journalist Tom Nolan wrote about Wilson in The Los Angeles Times West:

He has this great self-taught approach to music, which Barney Kessel calls “kind of a Stone-Age-Man approach,” so that every now and then he will do something that makes these veteran guys snicker behind his back, like saying to the engineer: "That trumpet over there should be a little louder; the one with the – what is that, a mute?" Or someone will point out to him that the four bars which he thought was a traditional vamp is actually from Twelfth Street Rag, which is copyright material. "That’s all right," he’ll say, "I’ll pay for it. You know I don’t steal."[4]

"Look" was later rewritten as "Song for Children" during the assembly of Brian Wilson Presents Smile (2004). According to Darian Sahanaja: "I was moving things around in Pro Tools, putting things together to show Brian. I dropped 'Wonderful' next to 'Look', and we listened to it. Brian's eyes lit up, and he said 'That's it! That's how we'll do it!'"[5]

Van Dyke Parks subsequently supplied lyrics to be sung in overlapping harmony vocals to further establish connections with other tracks on the album, especially those within the second movement, and it was renamed from "Look" to "Song For Children". In this version, the "Twelfth Street Rag" section is not performed. "Song for Children" served as the link between "Wonderful" and "Child Is Father of the Man", thus being the second track of the album's second movement.[1]

Per band archivist Craig Slowinski.[3]

The Beach Boys

• Carl Wilson – vocals (sampled from a 1971 recording for The Smile Sessions)

Session musicians (later known as "the Wrecking Crew")

• "Look" (session highlights) on YouTube