Regaining his 'SMiLE'

By Mark Brown

Van Dyke Parks performed a solo concert at a small hall in Holland last year. Afterward, as he was chatting with fans, one came up to him and said: "Hey, SMiLE is coming out."

"I didn't believe it, of course," Parks says. He and Brian Wilson had walked away from SMiLE for good.

We don't talk about personal things. But if I were a betting man, I betcha the last thing in the world he ever wanted to do was re-face SMiLE," Parks says.

And why would he? Wilson's unfinished 1967 opus had been dormant for more than three decades.

First, the other Beach Boys - particularly Mike Love - vehemently objected to Wilson's trippy music and Parks' impressionistic lyrics and imagery as too far removed from the Beach Boys' clean surf image.

In previous interviews, both Wilson and Parks used the word "failure" in connection with the project. It hung over their heads since they were 23 and 22, respectively; they didn't want to talk about it.

Attempts to get SMiLE liberated from the vaults always failed, despite an '88 attempt at salvaging it and talk of a box set in the '90s. Only bootleggers had any luck getting it out there, in patchy, incomplete approximations of what fans thought it might sound like.

Wilson certainly had no plans to return to it. When he thought of it, he says now, he could only think of the pain in that part of his life.

"I had bad memories of the drugs I was taking at the time we did it. I was taking LSD and marijuana and amphetamines. My head was kind of spaced out then," Wilson says, speaking recently by phone from his California home.

"SMiLE is something that has been bothering me for 35 years. Whenever I thought about it, I would think about the bad drugs I was on and stop thinking about it. I went for years trying not to think about it," he continues. "Finally it caught up with me; my wife Melinda and managers convinced me I should do it."

It wasn't a happy memory for Parks, either. Revisiting such a failed project "ain't for sissies," he says. "When you revisit an old relationship you bring up an upwelling of melancholia that most people don't have to deal with."

Even so, when Wilson finally called Parks last November and asked him to come over to his house in the Hollywood Hills, they went back to work.

"We started working on the third movement of the rock opera SMiLE," Wilson says.

And a mere 37 years late, it's here. Wilson and his backing band, The Wondermints, will perform SMiLE in its entirety on Wednesday at the Paramount Theatre, as well as a host of more-familiar Beach Boys classics. Fans are anticipating a night as great as when Wilson performed Pet Sounds in its entirety a few years back.

Reviews so far have been mostly ecstatic; compared to much of the market-researched music out there today, SMiLE is a sprawling, joyous piece of music for music's sake. And it's a remarkable achievement in one way. Bob Dylan, Prince, The Beatles - no one has ever gone back and finished an album decades after abandoning it.

"We researched the history of art. Forget the history of popular music. We couldn't find anything like it in the history of art . . . something where they'd created something at the peak of their powers, abandoned it, then reclaimed it 36, 37 years later," says David Leaf, Wilson's biographer and director of a new film documentary, Beautiful Dreamer.

The only thing that comes close is "similar circumstances with Michelangelo and da Vinci not finishing works of art." As for music, Leaf says, "usually the unfinished symphonies happen when the composer dies."

"I was in suspended disbelief when I got that call and (Wilson) said 'Can you come up tomorrow morning?' " Parks says. "So I did. We listened to this sequence that he had designed for the whole piece. I thought it would take a lyricist a lot of cheek to tell the creator that he wasn't doing it. I didn't question a bit."

Quite the opposite.

"I was very relieved then I first heard it. My sense of foreboding was replaced by a sensation of having a 10-ton truck lifted off my body. It was such a relief," Parks says.

Wilson these days is full of life, exuberant and happy. In the recent interview he was more informative and articulate than five previous interviews combined.

"He's firing on 12 cylinders. He's reemerging as a man, reemerging from a life of intoxication and medicines to keep him from hallucinating that were ill-advised," Parks says.

"The thing is, he's happy now. He's happy because he's being able to do what he's fully equipped to do - to be an artist who can perform, who can then derive something from the dialog that an audience brings him."

Far too much musical press has been focused on Wilson's struggles over the years, many feel.

"It was, of course, a tabloid mentality that drove it," Parks says. "The music has finally come out and I think it has elevated the discourse. I think people are thinking more about the music than they have in the past. That's where the focus belongs."

The story of 'SMiLE'

The story of the creation of SMiLE and its demise is oft-told. While the Beach Boys toured Europe on the triumph overseas of 1966's Pet Sounds, Wilson stayed home and composed Good Vibrations. Its overwhelming success and groundbreaking music led to high expectations for the album Dumb Angel (later changed to SMiLE).

Wilson was setting the tone for music in those days; his work was actually shaping what the Beatles and Dylan were doing.

"He was the most prolific man in the American music industry. He was bigger than anybody, even the Beatles," Parks says.

The Beatles have often acknowledged the influence that Wilson's work had on their own music. "I remember the Beatles snuck into the studio one night to listen to the work. We felt totally violated by it," Parks says. "I was not surprised when Sgt. Pepper's came out."

Hundreds of hours of SMiLE recording was done, songs were completed, and record jackets were even printed. But the pressures and timetables became too much. SMiLE died, and bits of it were cannibalized for Smiley Smile in late '67.

The late Carl Wilson reportedly said at the time: "We wanted to hit it out of the park, Brian, and you brought us a bunt."

The resurrection

"I felt that it was advanced music, a little bit ahead of its time," Brian Wilson says today. "So I shelved it. I junked it in 1967."

The aforementioned bad memories kept him from even listening to the music (though when a reporter handed him a copy of the album artwork a few years back, Wilson smiled warmly and ran his hands over it).

"Last year my managers told me they thought it was time. I said 'No, I don't agree.' And they said 'Look Brian, you gotta understand, it's time to put SMiLE out. It's time to perform it for people.' So I did it. They were right."

When his musical partner Darian Sahanaja compiled some of the songs for him, the memories came rushing back – but this time, they were the good ones.

"I was surprised to find out how good it was. I hadn't heard it for 35 years. It blew my mind. It was great music, fantastic," Wilson says.

Before re-recording the entire album (Capitol Records retains the rights to the original session tapes), Wilson and his crack band performed it live.

"We went to London in February and got standing ovations all over the place. I never expected standing ovations at all," he says. Ever since Pet Sounds, "The people in London appreciate music more than people in America. I think they're more sensitive to my music."

SMiLE is easily Wilson's highest-charting solo album (debuting at No.13 with 65,000 sales in its first week) and is on track to become his best-selling solo album. Already the word "Grammy" has been thrown around by fans.

Close to 90 percent of the music on SMiLE are songs that hard-core fans have heard before, either on box sets or bootlegs. Even though the majority of the music was finished, however, doesn't mean that SMiLE was anywhere near ready back in '67, Leaf says.

"I spoke to a number of people who were extremely close to the situations who felt very strongly that in essence, there was no SMiLE," Leaf says. Capitol Records was pushing for a new album, so Wilson gave them the name and titles at the time to keep them at bay.

"We can parse how much of it is new compositions, new lyrics, new vocals. But what Brian Wilson envisioned for SMiLE wasn't even close to happening in 1967 when he abandoned the project," Leaf says. "One of the reasons it was so difficult to finish was he had a grand vision for it."

The grand vision of the 3_-minute single Good Vibrations took six months of studio time to realize. "SMiLE was to be 10 times longer," Leaf notes.

What made it possible to finish in 2004, Leaf notes, is digital technology that allowed Wilson to finally be able to hear many variations of the mini-themes in different order.

"We used Pro Tools. My friend Darian, we call him our music librarian," Wilson explains. "He's the brains of the bunch. He and I sequenced all the different parts together. There's 25 sections, 30 sections."

"I don't think you can overestimate Darian's role in the whole process," Leaf says. "Unlike 1967, if Brian wanted to hear three pieces in sequence, it could happen almost instantly, rather than having to cut and splice tapes."

Then there was the matter of re-creating it all. Parks wisely stayed away.

"I was invited to the sessions, but I thought better of it," he says. "I thought that it was important that Brian be given the opportunity to come to his own conclusion about the work. Brian has got a crack team together, the Wondermints. They get it. There's an esprit de corps."

And they're filling some awfully large shoes, given that the original music was recorded by legends such as bassist Carol Kaye and drummer Hal Blaine.

"You're damn right they are. And Brian doesn't take anything lightly in making music," Parks says.

The Wondermints started backing Wilson when he became convinced to perform live again. Sahanaja was key in marrying the band with Wilson's sound.

"I was surprised how much Darian knew about my music. He knew every one of my songs. He taught the group all my songs," Wilson says. "He's an absolute musical genius. His sense of harmony and arrangement is fantastic."

Unanswered question

One can't help but think about the what-ifs, had SMiLE been completed as planned and issued six months before The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper.

"Had he been given a collective, unanimous support system to explore this work with no commotion - well, I'll never know what Brian Wilson could have done," Parks says.

But now that the music is out to such a grand reception, the bad memories are continuing to disappear.

"SMiLE has only brought me heartache," Parks says. "I'm getting the idea that it's possible to think about this project in the absence of pain. That would be a terrific blessing for me.

"Brian and I have been through some dark stuff on this. We're looking forward to the light."