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   Oct 8, 8:06 PM   
   Wilson's time to 'Smile'   
   Reclusive icon takes anticipated project on road; plans Melbourne stop   
   BY JOHN ROGERS   
   ASSOCIATED PRESS   
   If Brian Wilson could change one thing in life, it wouldn't be the   
   legendary emotional traumas, the insecurities, the drug abuse, the   
   battles with weight or the endless legal conflicts that nearly destroyed   
   him.   
   "I would have made the rhythm of 'California Girls' a little better,"   
   Wilson deadpans. "That," he adds with the slightest of smiles, "is my   
   only regret."   
   Were Wilson not shy and extremely modest by nature, he'd probably be   
   wearing a bigger smile these days. The genius who was the guiding force   
   behind the Beach Boys -- at a time when the group mattered to music as   
   much as the Beatles -- is back in all his creative glory.   
   The proof is "Smile," a 47-minute rock opera in three movements that,   
   when the composer envisioned it in 1966, was to have been a "teenage   
   symphony to God."   
   He was 24 then. He is now 62. Except for a slight paunch and the gray   
   overtaking his wavy brown hair, Wilson's appearance has changed little   
   from the gangly, cherubic-faced youth who captivated the world with such   
   songs as "Surfin' Safari," "Little Deuce Coupe," "Surfer Girl," "Catch a   
   Wave" and "Fun Fun Fun."   
   Though much of the public may forever associate him with the Beach Boys'   
   three-minute odes to sand, girls and cars, Wilson grew to be one of pop   
   music's greatest composers.   
   After the Beatles stunned the pop music world with the release of the   
   elaborately produced "Rubber Soul" in 1965, Wilson one-upped them with   
   "Pet Sounds." The Beatles, in turn, responded with "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely   
   Hearts Club Band," a work still regarded by Rolling Stone magazine as   
   the greatest rock album ever made ("Pet Sounds" is No. 2).   
   " 'Rubber Soul' was such an experience for me to hear that I went to my   
   piano and I started writing 'Pet Sounds' right away," Wilson, dressed in   
   blue jeans, a pullover shirt and tennis shoes, said recently during a   
   break from rehearsing "Smile" for a concert tour.   
   It was while the Beatles were in the studio putting together "Sgt.   
   Pepper" that he and longtime collaborator Van Dyke Parks were working on   
   "Smile" for the Beach Boys.   
   Those who heard early tapes predicted it would be the greatest rock   
   accomplishment ever. But it was not to be, and the reasons why quickly   
   became the stuff of legend.   
   Among the stories that spread over the years: Wilson suffered a nervous   
   breakdown. He realized he couldn't top the Beatles again, and it drove   
   him over the edge. His fellow Beach Boys -- in those days Wilson's   
   cousin Mike Love; his brothers, Carl and Dennis Wilson; and Bruce   
   Johnston and Al Jardine -- couldn't understand, let alone begin to play,   
   an album as complicated as "Smile."   
   So in frustration, it was said, Wilson set his studio on fire, destroyed   
   all the "Smile" tapes, then locked himself in drug-addled seclusion in   
   his room.   
   Indeed, his subsequent battles to overcome drug abuse and other problems   
   would be well documented.   
   "The pressure of trying to live up to my name was a little hard for me,   
   so I had some difficulties, some mental difficulties," he acknowledges   
   now. "But I worked through it."   
   The reason he gives for shelving "Smile," however, is much less   
   intriguing.   
   "I don't think it would have been a hit album," he says matter of   
   factly. "I think it would have been a big bomb."   
   "It was too advanced music. It was avant-garde music and it was too   
   ahead of its time," he adds, noting that even after his wife, Melinda,   
   persuaded him to finish it this year. He still had doubts that it would   
   be well-received.   
   Fueled by sometimes-drug-induced visions, "Smile" sought to create a   
   sprawling musical landscape of mid-America, one that extended across the   
   20th century and from the Midwest to Hawaii. Lushly orchestrated and   
   vocally challenging (a 22-piece band and a dozen voices are needed to   
   perform it in concert), it clearly would have been the ultimate Beach   
   Boys album.   
   Instead it has become Wilson's long-delayed masterpiece, a symphonic   
   work bookended by two of his most-heralded pop songs, "Heroes and   
   Villains" and "Good Vibrations."   
   "It's pretty much like if Frank Zappa and Mozart got together," is how   
   his current drummer, Jim Hines, describes it.   
   Wilson shuns comparisons to Mozart, Beethoven or other major musical   
   figures. He cites his influences as his contemporaries the Beatles and,   
   before that, producer Phil Spector, who created rock's "Wall of Sound."   
   "I don't consider myself to be a genius," he said. "I consider myself to   
   be a clever songwriter."   
   He acknowledges "Good Vibrations" and "California Girls" are   
   masterpieces, but he can't begin to explain how he created them.   
   "He says he is a conduit for God, and I really believe that's true,"   
   said musician Jeffrey Foskett, a friend and collaborator of more than 25   
   years.   
   Foskett was witness to some of the dark years, and he says Wilson's   
   reputation then, as a tortured, reclusive genius, was not off the mark.   
   "At some point in his life, he suffered greatly," Foskett said. "But in   
   the last 10 years . . . Brian has really had a turnaround."   
   Wilson broke with the Beach Boys years ago amid the band's many legal   
   squabbles. He has outlived both of his brothers and broken off contact   
   with the group's two veteran members.   
   "Mike Love and Bruce Johnston are out of my life," he says, making it   
   clear he doesn't wish to discuss them further.   
   He abandoned touring with the Beach Boys in the mid-1960s, although he   
   says his well-known battles with stage fright weren't a major reason.   
   "I just didn't like the road," he says. "I liked to stay home and write   
   songs. And when they'd come off the tour, they would record the songs I   
   wrote."   
   As for talk of his stage fright, musicians who work with him now say   
   Wilson appears to have gotten over it.   
   "Oh, no. No, no, it's not gone at all," he said. "I still have stage   
   fright all the time. Before every concert, I do about a half-hour of   
   stage fright. But then, as soon as we hit our first notes and the band   
   starts to play, and I start to sing, my fears go away. My fears and   
   phobias just dissolve."   
      
   Copyright © 2004 FLORIDA TODAY.   
      
   P.S. This is the same newspaper that said last Feb. 2004 that Brian "was   
   still in seclusion" when the "The Beach Boys Band played at Cocoa Beach   
   Pier.   
      
   jdp   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)