Brian Wilson releases long-awaited masterpiece

By Craig Whitney

Brian Wilson performs the song "Heroes and Villains" on a soundstage in Burbank, California.

For all its emphasis on the immediate and on the tangible, rock music has produced an inordinate amount of legendary, unfinished albums during its history. The Who's "Lifehouse," later to become the "Who's Next" album, and the Beatles' "Get Back," which would evolve into "Let It Be," along with several others, have attained legendary status among fans and critics as much for what they did contain as for what they might have.

But by far the most legendary "lost" album remains the Beach Boys' "Smile." Existing for over 37 years mainly as a collection of outtakes and re-recordings, the album finally saw its official release earlier this month as a solo recording by composer and former Beach Boy, Brian Wilson.

Wilson has stated that the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" was conceived of as a response to the Beatles' "Rubber Soul," an attempt to prove both that rock music could be art and that an American band was as equally capable of making it as were the British.

According to Paul McCartney, the results of this attempt were so impressive that it in turn motivated him in recording the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." So it is not too far-fetched to see "Smile" as the next step in this rivalry, an effort to expand the thematic unity of "Sgt. Pepper" into a musically coherent pop song-cycle.

Having worked successfully with lyricist Tony Asher on "Pet Sounds," Wilson made the decision to continue this practice of collaborative composition for the Beach Boys' next project after being introduced to musician and sometimes-actor Van Dyke Parks during the album's completion.

Wilson asked Parks to rewrite Asher's lyrics to the Beach Boys' next single, "Good Vibrations," Parks, however, decided to remain uninvolved until after the song was finished and accepted Wilson's offer to work with him on writing "Smile."

Although it is frequently hailed as one of the top five singles of all time, the recording process which Wilson adopted for "Good Vibrations," and subsequently used during the "Smile" sessions, gives a good idea of the problems which would, in part, derail that effort.

For "Good Vibrations," Wilson used what he termed his "modular" method of recording: laying down a basic track for the song, overdubbing instruments onto this track, recording new sections for the song, inserting these into the master tape, recording further overdubs and repeating the process until he was satisfied with the result.

All told, the recording process for "Good Vibrations" would stretch over eight months and four separate studios, costing over $50,000 and making it the most expensive single ever produced until that time.

Recording for "Smile" began soon after the release of "Good Vibrations" in October 1966. In December of that year, Wilson submitted a list of the 12 tracks that would make up the finished album to the Beach Boys' label, Capitol Records, announcing that the band would deliver the finished album before mid-January.

Wilson and the band turned their attention to completing "Smile's" first single, "Heroes and Villains," in time to coincide with the record's release.

However, the modular recording process which had delayed "Good Vibrations" proved even more unwieldy with the complex, descending scales of "Heroes and Villains."

Wilson halted production on the album to concentrate on finishing the song, moved production into his home recording studio and began writing new songs to augment to the already existing "Smile" tracks. In the meantime, the other Beach Boys, especially singer Mike Love, began to more openly voice their dissatisfaction with the group's new direction, questioning the contributions of Parks and eventually pressuring him into leaving the project in March of 1967.

While his bandmates recorded material of their own, Wilson selected a new song, "Vega-tables," as "Smile's" first single. But after two weeks' work with little progress made toward completing it, this song was abandoned, too. In May, the Beach Boys' press secretary Derek Taylor announced in Disc and Music Echo that work on "Smile" had been "scrapped."

The album which was subsequently released, "Smiley Smile," as well as several later Beach Boys' recordings, contained some of the songs which had been recorded for "Smile," including "Heroes and Villains" and "Vegetables," though oftentimes in significantly altered form.

Wilson gradually gave up on the idea of completing the project. In later years, he would answer questions on the piece by claiming to have destroyed the masters, calling them "inappropriate music."

In 2003, however, after returning from a successful solo tour performing the "Pet Sounds" album with his band, in search of a new project with which to occupy himself, Wilson followed his wife's suggestion to return to the unfinished "Smile" album. With help of bandmember Darian Sahanaja and a reconciled Van Dyke Parks, Wilson completed composition of "Smile" in the Fall of 2003.

The long-awaited piece was debuted with high acclaim at London's Royal Festival Hall in February 2004 and finally put to tape in its completed form during the summer.

Although fans and critics disagree as to how the new "Smile" compares with its older versions, there seems to be a common consensus that after nearly 40 years, it's good to have one of rock's great unfinished chapters finally down in the history books.

BRIAN WILSON
Album: "Smile"
Label: Nonesuch
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

It is impossible to listen to "Smile" now without comparing it to previously issued versions of its songs. Where this comparison does the new "Smile" the least credit is, not surprisingly, on its two most well-known songs: "Surf's Up" and "Good Vibrations." Rock music is as much the art of performance as it is of composition, and these two songs, which relied so heavily upon stellar performances for the effects they achieved, suffer most greatly of all the "Smile" tracks in the 40 years since its conception.

Being the most recognizable song on the album, "Good Vibrations" bears the most noticeable differences from its Beach Boys incarnation. Its mostly rewritten lyrics, and the absence of Mike Love and brothers Carl and Dennis Wilson's backup vocals, make Brian Wilson's rerecording of this hit single a rather disorienting experience on first listen.

"Surf's Up," though less broadly appreciated, was intended as, and still remains, the cornerstone of "Smile." Despite Wilson's magnificent production on this new version and his game attempt at hitting the falsetto of Van Dyke Parks' famously oblique refrain ("Columnated ruins domino,") the song seems rather tame beside the Beach Boys' utterly perfect performance of the song from "Smile" sessions. Especially glaring is the absence of that version's wonderful brass introduction, whose excision from the new "Smile" is rather puzzling.

But while some of the album has suffered in the time since its composition, the greater part of "Smile" benefits tremendously from Wilson's new approach to the material. On a whole, the songs are treated with greater warmth and humor, and less of the self-conscious eclecticism, than they were in previous recordings.

"Vega-Tables," Wilson's ode to all things green and leafy, takes a more ebullient musical approach to Parks' carefree lyrics, shedding the somewhat trying irony of the original "Smile" recording. Wilson reintroduces the themes from songs such as "Roll Plymouth Rock" and "Child Is Father Of The Man" into subsequent tracks on the album, giving the three-movement "Smile" an insular, symphonic quality lacking in its previously issued excerpts.

But the key changes lie in the humor Wilson brings to the production. Although "Smile" was recorded with the same modal technique he attempted with the Beach Boys, many of the older recordings seem too knowing and self-aware and stumble in trying to overcome their own profundity. "Smile" is essentially a piece of music which tries to show us how bright and full of humor the world can be if we only open ourselves up to its possibilities.

Although amazing in their own right, Wilson's previous attempts at recording the album concentrated too heavily on producing a masterpiece, deliberating over each note and forgetting the humor which inspired them. This time out, he seems to have realized that the essence of "Smile" lies not in the details, but in the spirit with which they are conveyed.