Surf's up for Brian Wilson as "Smile" is finally done

By Joe Bream

Brian Wilson has every reason to smile these days.

On Tuesday, the guiding light of the Beach Boys finally will issue his 37-year-old masterwork, "Smile," rock's most famous unreleased album. On Thursday at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis, Wilson will perform "Smile" in its entirety for the first time in the United States. And to top it off, this winter, when he re-recorded "Smile," Wilson welcomed a son -- after four daughters.

"I'm happy," said Wilson, 63, who tends to speak in bursts like cartoon balloons rather than in sentences and paragraphs.

Remember, he's rock's greatest living casualty, a victim of parental abuse, drug abuse and misguided therapies. Although Wilson said he has suffered brain damage, things have been relatively under control for a decade.

"I do find him smiling a lot more now," said keyboardist Darian Sahanaja, musical director of Wilson's band since 1999 and a catalyst for the resurrection of "Smile."

Yes, Wilson, whom Leonard Bernstein called one of the great composers of the 20th century, is happy about "Smile." Back in 1967, when he abruptly withdrew the album after 400,000 LP covers had been printed, he was frustrated about the work he called "a teenage symphony to God."

Wilson aborted "Smile" because it was "advanced, avant-garde music," he said in a recent phone interview from his Beverly Hills home. "I was on some crazy drugs back then -- LSD, marijuana and amphetamines -- so we couldn't continue to work on it."

Another factor: Fellow Beach Boys, including his brother Carl Wilson and cousin Mike Love, didn't like it, he said.

The intended follow-up to the Beach Boys' landmark 1966 concept album, "Pet Sounds,"Smile" was not a collection of songs made for the radio.

"It's not easy listening," said Van Dyke Parks, Wilson's lyricist for "Smile."Brian wanted to do more than be in the template of the Beach Boys."

Back then, Parks developed a story line about America's journey -- from Plymouth Rock to California -- and a personal journey to accompany Wilson's progressive pop compositions. After Wilson pulled the plug, Parks -- who has been an arranger and producer with Randy Newman, Carly Simon, U2 and Rufus Wainwright -- never thought "Smile" would see the light of day, although some of its songs (including "Good Vibrations" and "Surf's Up") were released on subsequent Beach Boys albums. And Parks was reluctant to revisit "Smile."

"I didn't want to go to Brian Wilson's to hear the piece; it was so daunting," Parks, 61, said last week.

Wilson said reviving "Smile" was the idea of his managers and his wife of 10 years, Melinda. Co-manager Jean Sievers said that on Wilson's last tour in 2001 and 2002, he received standing ovations for performing obscure numbers from "Smile."

"Once he got more comfortable with these songs, we thought, 'If he's ever going to do this, now is the time,' " Sievers said.

So last year, Sahanaja, 41, dug up the tapes of "Smile." The plan was to perform the work in concert, as Wilson and his band had done on tour in 2000 with the "Pet Sounds" album. Wilson and Parks met in November to reexamine the songs -- which neither had heard for 36 years -- with Sahanaja taking notes on their discussions.

Not a rewrite

Parks insists they "didn't want to change what we inherited ... we didn't want to digitalize it."

Wilson says the third movement of "Smile" had to be written. By Sahanaja's measure, 80 percent of the three-movement, 17-piece opus was complete. Wilson and his band, accompanied by a Swedish string and horn section, took "Smile" to Europe in February. It went over so well that they decided to record it this spring, and it will be released this week as "Brian Wilson Presents Smile."

Of course, redoing "Smile" wasn't quite so simple for Wilson.

"Initially he was apprehensive and nervous," Sahanaja recalled. "He associates a lot of the music with rejection" -- from his fellow Beach Boys and Capitol Records -- that "caused him much anxiety and pain."

The musical director said the project was a series of challenges, with Wilson getting scared and falling into an emotional funk at nearly every stage -- listening to the original tapes, finishing the writing, rehearsing with the band and then performing it in England.

"The love from the audience was just flowing through the air, and Brian soaked it up," Sahanaja said. "And I think that's part of the healing process."

On Oct. 5, Showtime will broadcast a documentary, "Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of Smile." Mike Love and Al Jardine, the only other surviving original Beach Boys, declined to be interviewed for the program, as did Marilyn Wilson, who was Brian's wife during the original recording of "Smile."

Now that "Smile" will be released, Wilson said it is his best work, superior to the widely revered "Pet Sounds" because "it's happier and more creative."

In conversation and in concert, it sometimes seems as if Wilson is not all there. Is he mentally ill, an idiot savant or just a big kid?

"He's all of the above," Sahanaja said.

"There are basic, everyday things he can't do," he added, "like opening a carton of milk. Yet he remembers everybody's phone numbers. And he's got a really good memory for dates. 'We did that in November of '64.' His social skills aren't very good."

In the middle of a 25-minute phone interview with the Star Tribune, Wilson excused himself briefly to go to the bathroom.

Saying he has been haunted by demons since the early days of the Beach Boys, Wilson still hears voices in his head.

"It's diminished but I hear them once every couple weeks," he said. "I was brain-damaged by LSD because it opened up my mind too much. It gave me too many thoughts."

Wilson, who released a slow-selling CD this summer featuring Elton John, Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney, wants to make another rock CD this fall and then record a children's album with toy instruments. He has three adopted children under the age of 10 and one grandchild -- and his adult daughters, Wendy and Carnie, are pregnant.

When he speaks about his children or grandson, Wilson's voice becomes noticeably happier. You can almost visualize his smile over the telephone.

"With Brian, there are the different degrees of smiles," Sahanaja observed. "It's very complicated. You definitely know when it's genuine. It's a lasting smile and a twinkle in his eye. That's when you know he's really, really happy about something. I'm seeing a lot of that now, especially since we finished the record. In fact, I don't think I've seen him this happy for an extended period of time."