Brian Wilson finishes what he started

By Jim Derogatis

In late 1966, Beach Boys leader and key songwriter Brian Wilson began an ill-fated collaboration with an eccentric young lyricist named Van Dyke Parks on an album originally called "Dumb Angel," which Wilson envisioned as the crowning achievement in a career that was already one of the most legendary in rock history.

A year earlier, Wilson had ditched the prop surfboard (he never surfed, anyway) and the matching striped shirts of the band's publicity pictures, retired from touring and moved far beyond catchy songs about girls and cars in favor of sounds that were much more complex, disturbing and psychedelic on the masterful "Pet Sounds" album. He had begun taking LSD and smoking marijuana in prodigious amounts in late 1965, which only made his already fragile mental state -- a result of the intense pressures of the band's career and a history of abuse at the hands of his father and band manager, Murry -- all the more precarious.

Though it stands as not only the best album of his career but as one of the most influential and innovative rock efforts ever, "Pet Sounds" was a commercial disappointment that sold only half a million copies when it was released in the spring of 1966. Wilson's cousin, Beach Boys singer Mike Love, felt vindicated by what he considered to be Brian's failure, and he began an effort to seize control of the band so that it could stick to the proven formula of early hits such as "California Girls" and "Surfin' U.S.A." Brian held on to the reins only long enough to complete one more single.

"Good Vibrations" was a three-and-a-half-minute "pocket symphony" that took six months to record, and its many melodic changes and complex vocal arrangements were worked out over 90 hours of tape. The distinctive swooping hook came from a theremin, an early synthesizer played by moving one's hand over an antenna. Capitol Records executives were worried that the song was "too modern" and that the lyrics had druggy overtones, but it turned out to be one of the Beach Boys' biggest hits -- and the beginning of the end.

The short version of the debacle that followed -- most memorably traced in Domenic Priore's book, Look, Listen, Vibrate, Smile -- The Beach Boys -- is that Brian had his notorious nervous breakdown in the midst of recording what was to have been the group's 10th studio album. He famously described "Dumb Angel" -- the album that was later retitled "Smile" -- as a "teenage symphony to God," adding a spiritual element to Phil Spector's description of his own hit singles. Wilson saw it as an epic of baroque studiocraft to top the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," but the recording sessions were notorious for their chaos and self-indulgence.

In addition to his drug abuse, Wilson suffered bouts of depression and paranoia. He built the infamous sandbox in his living room, and he refused to leave his bed for long periods of time. The nadir came when he tried to destroy the tapes of a track called "Fire" because he was convinced that the song had caused several blazes around Los Angeles. In May 1967, even though 400,000 album covers had already been printed, Capitol announced that "Smile" would not be released, giving the disc instant status as the most famous "lost" album in rock history.

The Beach Boys canceled a headlining appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival, and Jimi Hendrix told the crowd that it had heard the last of what he derisively called "the psychedelic barbershop quartet." Wilson withdrew further and further from music, his family and the world, until finally he was hardly there at all -- at least for several decades.

Now, in the midst of a career renaissance that began in the mid-'90s and that owes a lot to Wilson's wife of the last nine years, a former car saleswoman named Melinda Ledbetter, Brian has finally produced a finished version of "Smile," completing the songwriting cycle he started with Parks, and recording a fresh version with the 10-piece band that has accompanied him on several memorable tours over the last few years.

In 2000, Wilson's current band performed "Pet Sounds" in its entirety for the first time ever. The new "Smile," which arrives in stores Tuesday, is an obvious and more ambitious sequel to the "Pet Sounds" tour, and Wilson and the group will perform its three movements (along with other Beach Boys songs and solo material) in concert Saturday at the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress.

A vulnerable man who maintains a childlike naivete at age 62, Brian is a notoriously difficult interview subject. Though he claims to enjoy touring today, he seems disturbingly uncomfortable onstage at times.

"Brian is mentally ill," Melinda said in a recent interview with the New York Times. "He suffers from depression, and he was never treated -- and when somebody is mentally ill from that early on, and it goes untreated, then it makes it more difficult." She added that his current career is "one step at a time."

In the same article, Parks offered a revealing description of "Smile," saying, "There are intimations of mortality here, intimations about the end of his performing cycle. With these intimations, decisions become profoundly more difficult."

All of this -- the 37-year wait for a finished "Smile," the almost absurd ambition of the music then and now, and the always uncertain state of Wilson as a live performer -- combines to make the current tour, which received rave reviews in Europe, an historic and possibly once-in-a-lifetime experience that Beach Boys fans and students of rock history will not want to miss.

I spoke with Wilson about all of this in a recent interview from his home in Beverly Hills. (After he and Melinda married in 1995, they lived for a time in suburban St. Charles, but the couple and their three adopted children returned to Los Angeles several years ago.

Q. Brian, let me start by asking if you miss living in Illinois at all.

A. No, not all. I like Los Angeles a lot better. It's in my blood. It was nice [in St. Charles], but ...

Q. How did this "Smile" project come about?

A. Well, my wife and manager met a few months ago, and they said they thought the people in the world are ready to accept "Smile" graciously -- they're finally ready to hear it. So we got together and rehearsed for like a month and a half. My band are really superior musicians, so we did a really good job rehearsing. We took it to London in February, and we got standing ovations for six nights.

Q. Had you ever gone back and listened to the aborted recordings during the time between then and now?

A. No, I never gave it much thought over the years. During the time we were making "Smile" in 1967, we were on some drug trips. We took some bad drugs, and it kind of goofed up our heads.

Q. So you weren't eager to revisit that period.

A. Right. I loved the music, but I didn't like the memories.

Q. When everybody decided to look at "Smile" again, were the bad memories stirred up once more?

A. No. When we started rehearsing, I forgot about the bad vibes, and we had a good time.

Q. We've heard bits and pieces of "Smile" through the years, on bootlegs, when songs appeared on other albums and when snippets were included on one of the Beach Boys' box sets. How close does the new version conform to what we've heard before?

A. It's much superior. It's much, much better, much more advanced, much more polished, and the musicianship and the vocals are much better.

Q. As a composer, how did your ideas about what that music should be change over the years?

A. Well, we had to create a third movement for it. We had the first two movements, and we touched up the music and the lyrics for the first two movements, then Van Dyke and I created a third movement. And it was really a great movement.

Q. What was your original goal when you started writing this album in 1966?

A. To create something joyous and happy--a symphony to God for people to appreciate.

Q. Does any of it seem strange or dated to you now? I mean, a track like "Vegetables" [now titled "Vega-Tables"] is pretty absurd.

A. Well, "Vega-Tables" is a very humorous cut, a very funny cut. [Laughs] As a matter of fact, there's a story: In 1967, when we were recording "Vegetables," Paul McCartney walked into the studio with his publicity agent, Derek Taylor, and we gave him a stalk of celery to chew and some carrots while we recorded the vocals to "Vegetables."

Q. Were you able to preserve those sounds and put them on the new recording?

A. No, we did it all again.

Q. So there's none of the original recording on the new release?

A. None of it.

Q. Have you heard anything from the remaining Beach Boys about the album? They were famously against the project originally.

A. No, I personally haven't heard anything from them. No, I haven't.

Q. How does Chicagoan Paul Mertens stack up with some of the legendary studio musicians you worked with in the '60s and '70s?

A. Paul Mertens, our horn player, is better in my opinion. He arranged the strings and the horn charts for us -- he's real good. He's one of the best we've got. My band is a kick to play with -- they're the greatest musicians I've ever known.

Q. Technology has changed considerably since your aborted recording of "Smile" in 1967. Today, with computers and ProTools, you can have 100 tracks on a song, where you had four or eight at best when you started. Did that help with finishing this project?

A. Oh, yeah, we loaded those tracks up! We used about 48 tracks, and we just loaded it with tracks. We used ProTools to get the pitch on the voices perfectly, and you can tell. When you hear it, you'll notice that the pitch is perfect.

Q. Have you ever thought about what you could have accomplished in 1967 if you had this technology then?

A. No, I've never thought about it. I knew we were too advanced at the time, but we were taking bad drugs, so we shelved it. We just got rid of it for a while -- for about 38 years.

Q. Were you worried at all about whether this album could ever live up to all the speculation about it over the last four decades? It's sort of like J.D. Salinger finally returning to the spotlight with a new book.

A. Oh, no, we lived up to it for sure! We nailed it! As a matter of fact, it's much superior to the stuff we did in 1967. It's much better music

Q. And it's fun to play live?

A. Oh, yeah, we love playing it live. We have to be on the ball and play our concerts pretty good. It's tough work, but I like it.

Q. Did you play any of the instruments during the recording, in addition to adding your vocal parts?

A. I was producing. I was behind the board. I was producing, and [keyboardist] Darian Sahanaja was conducting. I didn't play any instrumental parts.

Q. Were the vocal parts more difficult now for you to hit at this age?

A. No, because I've been going to a vocal coach, a voice teacher. He strengthened my throat, and I was able to sing much better than I did in 1967. I think my voice is improving.

Q. When I first saw you perform with this group a few years ago, you seemed to be pretty uncomfortable onstage at times.

A. I got more comfortable as time went by. I got more used to it, and I was more into it -- more inspired. I feel great now when I'm onstage.

Q. Do you have a sense of how influential "Smile" has been on younger musicians, even though it was never officially released?

A. Every couple of weeks, I'll run into somebody who'll go, "Brian, your music has meant the world to me. I grew up with your music, and I really love it." I say, "Thank you so much," and I sign my autograph.

Q. Did the concerts you did performing "Pet Sounds" in its entirety lead to this project?

A. Going from "Pet Sounds" to "Smile" was going from an emotional experience to a joyous and happy experience. "Smile" was an entirely different approach, with different musicianship than "Pet Sounds." So it was fresh -- it was a new, fresh idea for us. It's better than playing Beach Boys songs, I'll tell you that!

Q. Do you still feel some pain when you perform those Beach Boys songs?

A. I feel a little bit of emotional pain about my brother Carl when I sing "God Only Knows." He was great. And also I feel a little bit of emotional pain when I sing "Forever," which Dennis wrote. So I have my share of sentimentality when I'm onstage.

Q. Do you follow your reviews and what people say about your music now?

A. I read some of it, but not all of it. I appreciate the good things that are said about me. Some people knock me a little bit, but most people are pretty much positive about my music. People are very happy to have us back working.

Q. Well, it's something many fans never thought they'd see.

A. Right! [Laughs]

Q. How much credit do your give to your wife for spurring you to record and tour again?

A. Well, it was her idea for me to start a solo career, and it was her idea for me to do "Smile." So she's quite a person in my life.

Q. Did you worry at all that "Smile" would eclipse "Gettin' in Over My Head," the solo album you released earlier this year?

A. I don't know if it will eclipse it. I think it might stimulate the sales for it. I think each album will stimulate the other.

Q. You're starting this concert by performing all of "Smile," then you'll be doing some other songs, right?

A. Right. We do "Smile," and then we do Beach Boys songs and Brian Wilson songs.

Q. Would you feel as if you were shorting yourself if you weren't performing new material?

A. Oh, yeah. I think it's great that we're doing those.

Q. I don't know how the Beach Boys can do it, functioning strictly as an oldies act.

A. Well, Mike Love and Bruce Johnston go out under the name the Beach Boys, and I go out under Brian Wilson.

Brian Wilson decided to reconstruct "Smile" after the "Pet Sounds" tour in 2000. Both discs hail from the Beach Boys' '60s heyday