XPost: rec.music.artists.beach-boys   
   From: dowdlehm@idelete.allspam.unread.com   
      
   The article   
      
      
   ---------------------------------   
   October 12, 2004   
   Flagpole   
   Athens, GA   
      
   ROCK'S GREATEST UNFINISHED MASTERPIECE -- FINISHED   
   Brian Wilson Talks About the Decision to Return to Smile   
      
   Former Beach Boy Brian Wilson has been busy lately completing unfinished   
   business from his long but sporadic music career. The big news is   
   Wilson's decision to finish and release Smile, the long-dormant album   
   that was meant to follow up the classic 1966 Beach Boys record Pet   
   Sounds.   
      
   Instead, Wilson abruptly shelved the Smile project in 1967 as he spun   
   into cycles of depression, drug abuse and isolation that, except for a   
   few stints of touring and recording, kept him out of music and the   
   public eye until the late 1990s.   
      
   Over the past three-and-a-half decades, Smile has taken on mythic   
   proportions as it became rock music's most famous incomplete   
   masterpiece. Over the years, a few tracks from the Smile sessions had   
   surfaced on various Beach Boys releases, while other snippets of music   
   had been bootlegged and circulated among the curious, some of whom   
   attempted to patch together their best guesses at what the "real" album   
   would have been.   
      
   What Should've Been   
      
   As it turns out, Smile was never that close to being completed,   
   according to Wilson. "We touched up the melodies and lyrics in the first   
   two movements a little bit, and then we created a whole third movement,"   
   he says. "Van Dyke Parks [songwriting collaborator on the original   
   Smile] and me created a whole third movement? It was far from being   
   done, far from being done.   
      
   The idea of incompleteness, however, that may be open for debate;   
   several third-movement songs that appear on the new version of Smile   
   either surfaced on various Beach Boys albums or were documented on   
   studio logs for the 1966?1967 recording sessions. Those previously known   
   songs include "Good Vibrations" (the Beach Boys hit appears on the new   
   version of Smile with the original lyrics written by Tony Asher), "Wind   
   Chimes" and "Vega-Tables," the original version of which is said to have   
   included a contribution from Paul McCartney, who provided some   
   percussive celery chewing.   
      
   In any event, the fact that a complete version of Smile has arrived   
   seems nothing short of miraculous given Wilson's long and troubled saga.   
   He began composing the album shortly after finishing Pet Sounds, the   
   groundbreaking Beach Boys album that inspired the Beatles to make Sgt.   
   Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Conceived, to use Wilson's own phrase,   
   as a "teen-age symphony to God," Smile was going to rewrite the rules of   
   pop songwriting by weaving together fully developed songs linked through   
   segues and interludes to form a continuous three-movement work. But as   
   weeks of work turned to months, problems surfaced. The other members of   
   the Beach Boys -- particularly lead singer Mike Love and Wilson's   
   brother, drummer Dennis Wilson -- worried that the music wasn't   
   commercial enough and questioned Parks' often impressionistic lyrics.   
   "They didn't want to do it. Mike and Dennis hated it," says Wilson.   
   "They thought it was really stupid music. They thought it was   
   inappropriate music for the Beach Boys."   
      
   Of course, another barrier to completing Smile was Wilson's own state.   
   For years he had dealt with the effects of being beaten as a child by   
   his father (and Beach Boys manager) Murry Wilson, and as the sessions   
   continued, Wilson began using drugs, displayed increasingly erratic   
   behavior and spiraled toward a nervous breakdown. As has often been   
   reported, at one point Wilson had large amounts of sand poured around   
   his piano so he could play the instrument and write in his own   
   living-room sandbox/ surrogate beachfront.   
      
   With pressures mounting to complete Smile (Capitol Records had already   
   printed 400,000 album covers), Wilson abruptly abandoned the project and   
   began falling further out of touch with reality.   
      
   An Album on Hold   
      
   Today, Wilson cites two factors for sidetracking Smile. "I was always on   
   LSD, marijuana and amphetamines. So was Van Dyke Parks," he says. "We   
   went on some bad drug trips and we got so deep into it that we said, 'Oh   
   my God, this music is way too advanced for people to hear. It's too   
   ahead of its time.' We didn't think people were ready to have three   
   segments flowing together like that. We thought people would think it   
   was stupid. It was very ahead of its time."   
      
   But last fall, Wilson's wife Melinda and his manager at the time   
   convinced him that the time was right to complete and release Smile.   
      
   Wilson, who says he had not listened to the album's original tapes since   
   abandoning the project, called on Parks to rejoin him in the   
   songwriting. Smile was then recorded by Wilson and his long-time backing   
   band The Wondermints and the Stockholm Strings'N' Horns. Wilson says he   
   feels the new version surpasses what the Beach Boys would have created   
   in 1967. "The musicianship that I have going with my band is far   
   superior to the original musicianship," he says.   
      
   The 2004 version of Smile certainly shows that Wilson was on his way to   
   making a groundbreaking album in 1966-1967. Opening with the gorgeous a   
   cappella harmonies of "Our Prayer," the album shifts into the   
   multi-faceted gem "Heroes and Villains" (itself a mini-pop symphony) and   
   hits another high point at the end of the first movement with "Cabin   
   Essence," a song that combines an old West motif with swirling vocal   
   harmonies.   
      
   The second movement is bookended by two other key songs, the dreamy   
   ballad "Wonderful" and the free-flowing, vaguely melancholic "Surf's   
   Up," a song lifted from the original sessions to become the title track   
   of the Beach Boys' 1971 album.   
      
   Smile's third movement starts on a sublimely goofy note, with the   
   charmingly off-kilter "I'm in Great Shape/ I Wanna Be Around/ Workshop"   
   followed by "Vega-Tables." It also contains two of Smile's most unique   
   songs, "Wind Chimes" and "Good Vibrations," with a return to its   
   original verses that will surprise those familiar with the Beach Boys'   
   version.   
      
   Taken as a whole, Smile is clearly a visionary and truly unique work. It   
   is both whimsical and childlike, yet highly sophisticated on a musical   
   level. Parks' impressionistic and often playful lyrics don't tell a   
   coherent story so much as they provide a fitting complement to Wilson's   
   fanciful music.   
      
   Today's California Dreams   
      
   Though born in a difficult period of Wilson's life, he now looks at   
   Smile as his most notable achievement. "First of all," he says, "it   
   contains some very, very well written songs. It had 'Heroes and   
   Villains,' 'Wonderful,' 'Wind Chimes' and 'Cabin Essence.' Those are all   
   very superior, well-written, special songs. It goes from statement to   
   statement, from one key to another like it's one congruous piece of   
   music. I think that's why it's an important piece of music."   
      
   [Brian Wilson Presents] Smile is one of two new Wilson albums. The   
   other, Gettin' in Over My Head, released in June, also finds Wilson   
   resurrecting a number of unfinished or unreleased songs -- several from   
   a planned mid-1990s solo album.   
      
      
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