'SMiLE' suite faithful to '60s sounds

By Mark Brown

In some ways, it's impossible to objectively listen to SMiLE in 2004. You can't listen to it in a vacuum, because it wasn't made in a vacuum.

It was mostly made and composed in 1966 and '67, incorporating the sounds of the times and focusing on the themes of the times.

For some fans, it's at long last hearing what they consider a lost masterpiece of modern music. But for others, SMiLE is a difficult piece of music to get their ears around. It's a sprawling suite of songs in three movements, most of it extremely faithful to its period sound.

And it's a far cry from the melancholy love songs of Pet Sounds, which preceded it in 1966.

"I hope they don't compare it to Pet Sounds," Brian Wilson says now. "You can't compare it. It's much happier than Pet Sounds, much happier music. It was just a happy music bag we got into."

It starts with the a cappella Prayer and ends with a sonically faithful remake of Good Vibrations that sports some lyrical changes. In between are some Wilson classics, especially Heroes and Villains and Surf's Up. But there are also some tough, quirky moments: Vegetables, Mrs. O'Leary's Cow.

Its composers, however, are able to give some context. One of the first things Wilson did in reviving SMiLE is ask lyricist Van Dyke Parks what a certain word was on an old lyric sheet. That word was "Indians," and is key to understanding SMiLE's sprawling tale of the American West.

"I was fascinated with Indians, we all were in that counterculture. We were interested in what we'd done to the indigenous people of America," Parks explains.

So SMiLE starts with references to Plymouth Rock and ends in Hawaii. "That's how far the westward expansion had taken us. From Plymouth Rock to Hawaii. We just wanted to do something that kind of suggested an American history," Parks says.

"The 20th century was known as the American Century. And we knew it was passing. We could see it passing with every broadcast about Vietnam or the water cannons directed at the black people in Selma.

"We were in a nation that was in foment; completely divided, very much like it is today politically. It was very gauche to act or be American. All we knew is we'd try to find what we could that was confirming about the American experience."

Songs that were previously instrumentals were given lyrics and vocals, and a new song, In Blue Hawaii, was composed.

"It's rough and ready. It's plain and fancy. It's a bunch of small pictures. It sounds surprisingly personal to me," Parks says.

It ends with Good Vibrations because that famous single was long intended to be part of this project. Wilson objected at first.

"I said 'Good Vibrations is an old record.' My wife said 'Yeah, but there are a lot of people who haven't heard it.' So it'll be heard on this album," Wilson says.

Parks added a "P.S." of sorts in Mrs. O'Leary's Cow, known to fans as the "fire" section of the piece.

In the middle of a long, chaotic section of music meant to invoke heat and flames, "it occurred to me that some words, perhaps, were needed. I came home and I imagined Brian in his chaos in the present tense today, alive and performing this piece. So I wrote the words 'Is it hot as hell in here or is it me? It really is a mystery' because it felt so hellish," Parks says.

Behind all the music, Parks says, "is a man in great torment. I thought it was time to lose the Technicolor bath and get starkly black and white. Leave this man alone, stripped and bleeding . . . as if he were interacting with the record himself.

"I thought that was important for him to step outside the frame for a second and confess the difficulty it took him to get this far."