February 26, 2004
Washington Post

Brian Wilson's 'Smile' at Last
After 30 Years, the Beach Boys' Founder Emerges From Darkness

By Glenn Frankel

LONDON, Feb. 25 -- In the annals of rock-and-roll history, there is no greater legend than Brian Wilson's lost masterwork known as "Smile."

Wilson was the fragile musical genius who wrote, produced and performed on the Beach Boys' exuberant hits during the 1960s. "Smile" was reputed to be his ultimate achievement, a densely packed song cycle of intriguing melody and rich harmony that should have appeared at about the same time as the Beatles' classic "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album.

But somewhere on the road to completion in the spring and summer of 1967 Wilson lost his way, scrapping large chunks of "Smile" and descending into nearly three decades of drug-induced madness from which he began to emerge only a few years ago. And "Smile" descended with him. A few pieces of the puzzle appeared on various albums to tempt and torment Wilson's fans. But the great work itself vanished, as if it had never existed.

Until now.

This past week, Wilson, now 61, has been treating British audiences to a modern version of "Smile," performed for the first time live onstage at Royal Festival Hall here. It's been an event of extraordinary power and poignancy, sold out for five nights, fronted by a man who barely makes eye contact with the audience, whose voice often struggles to remain on key, and whose every hesitant gesture suggests a lifetime of pain and turmoil.

To pull off this remarkable performance, Wilson has surrounded himself with a battalion of young, gifted and empathetic musicians, led by Darian Sahanaja and his Southern California band, the Wondermints. Tuesday's concert began with 10 musicians and singers clustered around Wilson like a human cocoon, exchanging well-rehearsed patter. Playing acoustic guitars and bongos, they launched into a series of Beach Boys hits, including "Surfer Girl," "In My Room" and "Please Let Me Wonder," before expanding into a fully amplified rock band, supplemented by eight additional string and horn players. The highlight of an evening of highlights was "God Only Knows," a wistful lover's plea from "Pet Sounds," the 1966 album that Paul McCartney once called "the classic of the century."

After the break, Wilson and his crew returned for "Smile." The work, which Wilson once described as "a teenage symphony to God," was broken into three movements, each anchored loosely by a theme and a song suite. "Heroes and Villains" opened the first segment, which focused on Americana; "Surf's Up" the second, which seemed to be about childhood; and "Good Vibrations" climaxed the symphony with an ode to elemental emotion.

The band played with great enthusiasm -- at one point, the string and horn sections donned bright red firemen's helmets to perform "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow," a somber, atonal dirge. They also ostentatiously munched on carrots and broccoli for the "Vegetables" medley.

No one is claiming that this concert version of "Smile" is a note-for-note reproduction of the original. In program notes for the concerts, Sahanaja says he, Wilson and original lyricist Van Dyke Parks sat down and worked out a rendition that could be performed live, with certain new melodies and ideas that were faithful to the original in spirit. "There really wan't an attempt to go back to the past," said Sahanaja. "It was more about what felt natural to the two of them at the moment."

There are no plans yet to perform "Smile" in the United States, but such a tour seems inevitable. This week's various performances were taped and are likely to wind up on DVD, CD or both, as did a similar concert presentation of "Pet Sounds" three years ago.

The Beach Boys began as three brothers, a cousin and a best friend playing surfing music in someone's Southern California garage. Wilson wrote the tunes that made them America's most popular pop group, but he quickly tired of touring. While the rest of the band was on the road, Wilson began churning out increasingly ambitious and difficult music that strayed further and further from the pop formula. He entered into an open competition with the Beatles -- they produced "Rubber Soul" in 1965, he countered with "Pet Sounds" in 1966, they answered back with "Revolver." It was a brief moment when pop music and the creative ambitions of a handful of restless, self-taught twentysomethings came together to produce a version of art.

Eventually Wilson and Parks put together the pieces of passion and whimsy that became "Smile." When the band returned from an Asian tour, so the story goes, lead singer Mike Love said he found "Smile" weird and incomprehensible and said so. Wilson, who was by this time heavily into self-medication with LSD, freaked. He disappeared, and so did "Smile." The version that was issued as the album "Smiley Smile" in late 1967 was an impostor -- "a bunt instead of a grand slam," according to Brian's brother Carl.

Thirty-seven years later, Carl is dead, as is Dennis Wilson, Brian's other brother. Mike Love fronts a group calling itself the Beach Boys that specializes in Las Vegas-style nostalgia -- the ultimate oldies band. And Brian soldiers on, wrestling with his demons and his vision of adolescent angst.

At Tuesday's show he was dressed in a loose-fitting sweater, blue gym pants and white trainers, and he looked like someone's slightly eccentric grandfather. For most of the concert he sat on a stool in front of an electric piano he never played, his hands moving feverishly to the music as he delivered lyrics he clearly was reading from two monitors flanking the piano. It was exhilarating and at the same time deeply sad. Although his young acolytes hovered nearby, he seemed totally alone.

"His eyes looked haunted, like those of a bereaved parent," wrote author Tim Lott after witnessing the show.

"Smile" lasted about 40 minutes. Then for the encore, Wilson returned to Beach Boys standards, including "Dance, Dance, Dance," "Help Me, Rhonda" and "I Get Around." Their adolescent concerns and simple emotions -- relief at the end of a high school day, being dropped by one girlfriend and pleading to another, hanging out with the guys -- seemed extraordinarily moving as rendered by a troubled 61-year-old man searching for deliverance.

He sang them like a prayer.

February 25, 2004
London Evening Standard

WAVES OF SHEER LOVE FOR BEACH BOY BRIAN

by Tim Lott

Ten young musicians, glowing with pride and happiness, gather round a grey-faced old man in shiny trousers and a high-street casual shirt which follows the outline of a sagging belly. His face - its contours, its expression, its unutterable weariness - speak of anguish barely supportable. The musicans represent a cocoon; at its fragile, exquisite centre stands Brian Wilson, called back from the dead to perform, at the Royal Festival Hall, his lost masterpiece, Smile.

This is not merely a pop concert. It is tragedy mitigated. It is the comeback of King Lear. For the sight of this apparently wrecked, grief-stricken face - Wilson has famously spent much of the last 30 years on the brink of madness, even death - produced an extraordinary response in the audience.

I have probably been to thousands of pop concerts in my life. But I have never felt anything like what I sensed here.

What I felt was love, waves of it, like heat. And though celebratory, this was mixed with something else - desperation. Desperation that Wilson be alright, that he would get through the evening, that he would not hurt himself. The sentiment, I suspect, ran from the lowliest fan to the highest. (For the great - Paul McCartney, Roger Daltrey, George Martin - had gathered to honour the great.)

Onstage, the contrast of youth and age and the apparent juxtaposition of grief and enthusiasm was odd enough. The musical assembly began to josh and banter, in a pre-rehearsed manner evoking those archaic variety shows in which square people like Val Doonican would attempt to be cool with, say, Donovan or Twiggy. Lear attempted a smile that swiftly collapsed. It was as if he were trying to bench-press 200 kilos.

The show started with innocuous songs I didn't recognise. Wilson's voice seemed submerged in the tapestry of voices. I began to think it was a cheat; a tribute band, fronted by an old trouper, a lush they'd picked up in a Kilburn boozer. Then In My Room began, and Wilson took a solo, and something even stranger happened. I started to cry.

It was far from the last tear I would shed. I found it impossible to take my eyes off Wilson. At times he looked barely sentient; his hands worked the air as if to keep balance. Event at 50 yards, his eyes looked haunted, like those of a bereaved parent. But then his eyebrows would rise, his mouth would curve and a song of absolute joy and poignancy would intoxicate the night. When Sloop John B began, the man next to me also began to weep. We were no longer watching music, but experiencing a narrative about the collapse of youthful hope and the aching, poignantly distant possibility of redemption (for we could not be sure Wilson had really made it all the way back).

By the second part of the show, when Wilson had sat himself behind a Yamaha keyboard with two screens that flashed up the words to the songs for him, I was - we all were - in bliss. California Girls and Sail On Sailor produced more tears. Wilson danced like my father would dance to the Sex Pistols. His voice was sometimes flat. But it didn't matter.

We were there not to simply sing, or listen, but to join together to rage against the dying of the light. Then the great moment, the unveiling of the lost 45-minute masterpiece, Smile. It sounded like the soundtrack to a nervous breakdown. I couldn't love it. All I could love was Brian. A rock and roll medley wrapped the evening up: I Get Around, Help Me Rhonda, etc. It was decent, bracing pop - a footnote to the real meaning of the event.

Those of us who watched last night saw, and felt, something remarkable. It was not that Wilson had exactly been resurrected. There was something only half-realised about him, as if he was still pushing at the invisobe world that kept him apart from the rest of us, the impossible alienation of genius.

No - what we saw, and participated in, was a collective act of love and remembrance and, I think, compassion. And perhaps, in the stumbling, rigid Wilson and his still pure voice, the mitigation, if only momentary, of our own inevitable fall into decay.

As an evening of music, it was patchy. As a summoning of hope, it was extraordinary, and I for one will never forget it.

February 24, 2004
Sueddeutsche.de

Beifall, endlich, nach mehr als 35 Jahren

Brian Wilson, geisteswunder Kopf der Beach Boys, ließ schon mal Feuer im Studio legen, um der Inspiration nachzuhelfen. Wenn es dann im ganzen Viertel brannte, fühlte er sich in seiner Paranoia bestätigt. Jetzt war der Prophet in Jogginghosen mit einem Pop-Oratorium in London zu bewundern. Eine Sternstunde. Und das Publikum raste vor Glück.

Der Vater, selbst gescheitert als Songschreiber, prügelte ihn zur Arbeit, verlangte ihm die Songs ab, mit denen die Beach Boys berühmt wurden, ihre Hymnen auf Sonne, Strand, das Surfen, die Mädchen (zwei für jeden). Das war Kalifornien, und es war das Paradies auf Erden.

Die Kinder donnern noch im Dunkeln mit ihren Rollbrettern über die schiefen Ebenen vor der Hayward Gallery und der Royal Festival Hall, reißen sich, kurz vor dem Sturz, das Skateboard unter den Füßen weg, stehen für einen Moment, als warteten sie auf das Haltungsurteil der frierenden Punktrichter am Rand. Die älteren Kinder tuscheln: Wie es ihm geht? Was er spielen wird? Kommt heute Pete Townshend? Was haben wir nicht gebangt all die Jahre um Keith Richards und Bob Dylan, aber das war nichts gegen diesen Wahnsinnigen, gegen Brian Wilson, das größte Genie der Popmusik.

Das Kind im Mann will bloß immer nur spielen, meinte einst der Philosoph und ließ sich als heiterer Sklave der Lou Andreas-Salomé fotografieren. Der junge Brian Wilson hatte nichts zu spielen, nur seinen grundmusikalischen Kopf. Der Vater, selbst gescheitert als Songschreiber, prügelte ihn zur Arbeit, verlangte ihm die Songs ab, mit denen die Beach Boys berühmt wurden, ihre Hymnen auf Sonne, Strand, das Surfen, die Mädchen (zwei für jeden). Das war Kalifornien, und es war das Paradies auf Erden.

Brian Wilson hatte nicht besonders viel Glück bei den Mädchen, er konnte nicht surfen, er war sogar wasserscheu, aber er fabrizierte diese ewiggültigen Hymnen wie verlangt am Fließband. Als ihm die Inspiration auszugehen drohte, ließ er sich Lastwagenladungen voll Sand ins Haus kippen, stellte sein Klavier hinein und seine Füße und schrieb weiter darüber, dass wir alle nach Kalifornien kommen müssten, wo die Sonne scheint und das Schleckeis lockt.

Aber Brian Wilson hörte Stimmen. Er hörte eine Musik, die nicht mehr durchs Transistorradio zu pressen war. Das Kind begann wieder zu spielen, aber es hatte sich in seinen Kopf zurückgezogen und in eine immerwährende Traurigkeit. Brians Bruder Dennis ging auf seinen eigenen Trip, freundete sich mit Charles Manson an, der ihm gegen Kost und Logis einen Schulbus voller nackter Mädchen und sämtliche Geschlechtskrankheiten ins Haus karrte. Die anderen warteten auf die dauerheiteren Surfereien.

Brian aber verließ diese Welt und bastelte „kleine Teenager-Symphonien für Gott“ zusammen. In steter Konkurrenz mit den Beatles, die seit „Revolver“ und „Sgt. Pepper’s“ immer konzeptiger und verernstelter geworden waren, strebte auch Brian Wilson ins klassische Fach, und das bekam weder ihm noch seiner Musik. Die anderen höhnten über „Brians Wahnsinn“, aber wenn ihn doch sogar der große Lenny Bernstein lobte? Brian ließ statt seiner Strandjungs Orchestermusiker aufmarschieren, sammelte ungewöhnliche Instrumente, ließ es miauen und gurren und jauchzen, aber er wurde nur immer unglücklicher dabei.

Meinem Deutschlehrer wäre hier natürlich der gute alte Teufelspakt eingefallen, vom Doktor Faustus hätte er unweigerlich brummbassen müssen, und dass der Künstler, wie Künstler das zwanghaft so tun, nebst seiner Seele auch noch den Verstand drangegeben hat für die unerhörte Musik. Daran ist richtig, dass diese Musik tatsächlich niemand hören konnte. Allenfalls auf Bootlegs tauchten Schnipsel dieses Wahn-Werks auf, keiner wusste Genaueres, und das Geraune vom unbekannten Meisterwerk hielt sich über fast vier Jahrzehnte. Brian Wilson wurde wirklich verrückt davon, verfiel nacheinander dem Haschisch, dem Alkohol, den Handreichungen gruppenweise eingekaufter Mandelaugen, dem Fressen und schließlich einem Psychiater. Das Kind wollte nichts mehr. Dass es aus diesem spezifisch kalifornischen Wahnsinn doch noch erlöst wurde, verdankt es seinen Fans. Zehn von ihnen scharen sich mittlerweile unter dem Namen Wondermints um Brian Wilson und konnten ihn bewegen, nach der „Pet Sounds“-Tournee vor zwei Jahren nun in der Londoner Royal Festival Hall endlich auch das geheimnisvollste Werk der Popgeschichte aufzuführen: „Smile“.

Wie Schüler gruppieren sich die Musiker zum Anfang um den aschfahlen, regungslosen Meister, spielen, als probierten sie seine Songs erst aus. Die Gruppe präsentiert die alten Songs mit Studio-Perfektion, falsettiert bei Bedarf nicht schlechter als die Everly Brothers und verströmt eine Begeisterung, die sich bei ihrem verehrten Meister nicht mehr einstellen will. Brian Wilson ruht inmitten seiner Jünger, gibt mit der Linken manchmal den Takt vor, klatscht ihn auf den Oberschenkel, zieht aber oft die Hand mit den gespreizten Fingern so langsam zurück, als müsste er sich doch vergewissern, dass er es ist, dass er hier wirklich sitzt und gefeiert wird.

Und dann führen sie nach der Pause wirklich „Smile“ auf, oder das, was sich für eine Aufführung eignet. Allerlei seltsame Instrumente tauchen auf, Rasseln, ein Blech, ein Kürbis. Sogar der legendäre Van Dyke Parks, unter dessen lyrischer Anleitung Brian Wilson vor fast vierzig Jahren verrückt wurde, kommt auf die Bühne und schlägt ein Tamburin. Brian Wilson und seine neuen Beach Boys spielen eine unglaubliche Version von „Heroes and Villains“, spielen „Vegetables“ (Brian war auch mal Makrobiotiker) und „I Love to Say Da Da“. Der graugewordene Mann in der Mitte, der das alles einmal erfunden hat, lacht noch immer nicht, aber er ist endlich glücklich. Das Publikum weiß sich bei einer Sternstunde und rast vor Glück.

Nicht eine Pop-Symphonie, sondern ein Kinderzimmer-Pandämonium tobt auf der Bühne, dass es nur so schrillt und sägt und kreischt und jault und trötet. Brian Wilson betätigt eine Art Handsirene, die herbeigeholten Musiker haben kleine rote Feuerwehrhelme aufgesetzt für das vielberaunte apokryphe Werk „Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow“. Als die Beach Boys das Stück 1966 aufnahmen, ließ ihr Konzertmeister, um der Inspiration nachzuhelfen, ein Feuer im Studio anzünden. Als es gleich danach im Viertel brannte und die echten Löschzüge mit den rotierenden Lichtern herumstanden, fühlte sich Wilson in seiner Paranoia bestätigt. Zwei oder drei Jahre ist er dann nicht mehr aus seinem Bett aufgestanden.

In der Royal Festival Hall ist die Szene ein sorgloses Spiel, als wär’s im Ernst möglich, die unschuldige Kindheit wiederzufinden. Und der Mann, der nie mehr lachen konnte, ist glücklich. So glücklich, wie es nur ein Kind sein kann, das endlich mit dem knallroten Plastikfeuerwehrauto spielen kann, das es sich so lange schon gewünscht hat.

Die Band, organisiert von Darian Sahanaja, hält und stützt ihn und kann sich seiner doch nie sicher sein. Jederzeit könnte Brian Wilson auf die Knie fallen, theatralisch sein vermurkstes Leben bereuen, danken für seine Errettung vor dem Alkohol (den Drogen, den schlimmen Weibern und der bösen Musik) und verkünden, dass er Gott gefunden habe oder einen neuen Psychiater, der ihn knechtet nach Art seines Vaters. Aber er tut es nicht, er hat für drei Stunden sein Zimmer aufgeschlossen. Sterbenswund an der Seele singt er vom „Soul Searchin’“, wünscht er im Nachtgebet allen Liebe und Gnade und keine Gewalt im Fernsehen mehr. Er hält durch. Brian Wilson ist wieder Kind geworden und damit gerettet. Zum Gruß hebt er die Hand und geht dann mitten im frenetischen Jubel der eine ganze Woche lang ausverkauften Royal Festival Hall ab. In einer Jogginghose schleicht er davon, gebeugt, der Welt abhanden gekommen, und mag noch immer nicht glauben, was er eben gehört hat: seine Musik und den Beifall dafür, endlich, nach mehr als 35 Jahren.

Als es aus ist und wieder so kalt am Ufer der Themse, vibriert in der Luft weiter diese symphonische Musik, dazwischen die Klassiker, lauter Götterfunken: „Sloop John B.“ und „Barbara Ann“ und „Good Vibrations“. Der Strand ist offen, die Mädchen warten, die Welle kommt, let’s go surfin’ now. Wie bitte? Ja, hier die Moral von der Geschichte: Amerika ist doch gut, und Brian Wilson ist sein Prophet.

February 24 2004
Independent.co.uk

Brian Wilson, Royal Festival Hall London: There's plenty to smile about

By Keith Shadwick

In early 1967, when Jimi Hendrix was in London laying down the blueprint for rock's future on Are You Experienced?, the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson was in LA rapidly losing his grip on Smile, the epic follow-up album to his acknowledged masterpiece, 1966's Pet Sounds. When Hendrix sang in "Third Stone from the Sun", "May you never hear surf music again", he was not to know how quickly his wish would be granted. By the end of 1967, The Beach Boys were virtually forgotten a year after the triumphant innovations of Good Vibrations. What happened?

Wilson, along with his friend, the lyricist Van Dyke Parks, had conceived in Smile a project so vast in scope and ambition that it needed every bit of luck coming its way. And for a few months in late 1966 all was fair sailing: with "Good Vibrations" already in the bag, such pieces as "Heroes & Villains", "Wind Chimes", "Wonderful", "Cabinessence", "Surf's Up" and "Vegetables" were conceived and intensively worked on. But for Wilson, the idea of simply making an album's worth of tunes was inadequate: he wanted to present a unified LP that interwove all its themes and ideas in a continual renewal of idea and melody. Facing personal, professional and artistic difficulties, Wilson faltered, delayed completion, then finally announced Smile's abandonment. Those in the know, as well as long-term Beach Boys fans, have regarded this ever since as an incalculable loss to rock's legacy, and over the years successive isolated snippets and fragments of the original work in sub-sequent Beach Boys albums occasioned critical wailing and gnashing of teeth about what might have been.

Now, however, Brian Wilson decided it was time to confront the past and complete Smile. During this process, in late 2003 he re-engaged with lyricist Van Dyke Parks and set about finishing Smile. The results of this long labour were revealed at the Royal Festival Hall on 20 February 2004 - 37 years on.

Even before the music started, things got off to a good start: Wilson's guests, including Van Dyke Parks himself, were given a standing ovation as they made their way to their seats. The group was revealed standing, camp-fire style, on one side of the stage, circled around a seated Wilson. It was a great way to start the evening, allowing everyone - but most importantly Wilson - to feel their way into things. Wilson sat centre-stage behind a keyboard he hardly touched, reading the autocue for every song as he tried to overcome his natural shyness. Yet all eyes were on him. It was as if we had all become participants in his private vision of how the music worked. And boy, how it worked: each old hit was meticulously reinvoked (down to the smallest tambourine stroke) with huge gusto by the young and frighteningly accomplished group.

This came into play even more in the concert's second half, when Smile was finally revealed to the world. It caught even the most assiduous fan unawares, for Smile was much bigger than the sum of its parts - a collection of songs and fragments fitted together to give a huge musical panorama.

Smile was shaped into three song suites, each with linking material. The first comprised: "Our Prayer", "Heroes & Villains", "Do You Like Worms", "Barnyard, "Old Master Painter"/"You Are My Sunshine" and "Cabinessence". The second comprised: "Wonderful", "Child is Father to the Man", "Surf's Up" and Smile's third and concluding part was the fabled "Elements" suite using transitional passages including "Holiday", followed immediately by "Good Vibrations", which wound up the concert with a new and dramatic staccato rhythmic pattern, voices and instruments in climactic unison. The crowd was instantly on its feet giving a standing ovation replete with ecstatic cheers and whistles. A visibly dazed Wilson eventually stood up from behind his keyboards, bent over to his microphone and said in a distracted whisper: "Good night everybody, drive safely", and made as if to leave. At that, band member Jeff Foscombe, who had substituted for Wilson most of the evening when it came to on-stage patter, walked quickly over to him and spoke in his ear. Wilson once more bent to the microphone, this time asking Van Dyke Parks to join the group onstage. The crowd went nuts, and the diminutive, bow-tied Parks emerged from the wings looking as if he was walking on air. He probably was. Everyone else in the RFH certainly was; we knew we'd witnessed a miracle of sorts.

Readers who want to see Wilson conjure this miracle at the RFH have tonight, tomorrow, and Friday before his show moves out of London. I would hazard a guess that something more will come of all this - perhaps a CD or even a DVD commemorating Smile's latter-day second coming. Only 37 years late. Rock history revisionists are going to have a field day.

February 23, 2004
Billboard

Brian Wilson London (Royal Festival Hall)

In the wrong hands at the wrong time, Brian Wilson's decision to exhume his abandoned "life's work" of 1966 and represent it half a lifetime later could have desecrated the memory of one of rock's greatest fables. The "Smile" album has become legendary without ever being heard, at least outside of select Beach Boys alumni and key critics of the day who were invited to hear Wilson's intended masterpiece before it went up in a blaze of paranoia, late deadlines and disapproval from some short-sighted peers.

But that would underestimate the astonishing personal and creative recovery of the damaged genius since, five years ago this week, he assembled the outstanding band of musicians that has revitalized his life. When this writer met Wilson at his Beverly Hills home in 1998, his talk of plans to tour again someday soon seemed the pipedream of a man who was, and remains, nervous of the outside world. That legacy of his famous breakdown of the mid-1960s remains, but Wilson has nevertheless made huge strides towards reintegration in recent years with the help of a caring cabal of family and friends, led by his wife Melinda.

That alone would be reason for private celebration for anyone who listens in awe to his unparalleled body of work. But with a band of players whose attention to detail for the Beach Boys' classic recordings and a good-natured urbanity which has drawn the best out of Wilson, he has become a positive road-hog in recent years by comparison to his former reclusive self.

With Wilson happily reported to be working again on new material, the exacting standards of the ambitious young producer that still live inside his 61-year-old self have insisted on yet one greater challenge: to complete and augment the lost album and perform it live.

The results perpetuate the dream-state into which many long-term Beach Boys fans have ascended thanks to this unimaginable culmination of Wilson's personal California saga. The band is now performing "Smile," topped and tailed by a generous helping of hits and other favorites that didn't fit on previous tours, six times at the Royal Festival Hall at the front of a 16-date European tour.

The show was choreographed with a delightful touch from start to finish, playing up Wilson's continuing strengths: his continuingly evocative and generally reliable vocals, and his very aura -- and diluting his timidity with the sheer vibrancy of the performance. To begin with, there was the inspiring sight of the band circling around a few microphones, keeping Wilson comfortable at the core, for a wonderfully informal presentation of such gems as "In My Room," "Keep an Eye On Summer" and "Good Timin'." Then, as everyone assumed their regular places across the stage and Brian sat at a keyboard animatedly moving his hands as he sang, more classics, from "God Only Knows" to "California Girls."

"Smile" would form the first portion of the second half of the show, and was intricate, challenging and yet warmly familiar, full of tempo shifts, snippets of vintage romantic melodies and banks of harmonies and instrumentation that rolled and roared as unpredictably as a mighty wave. "Heroes & Villains," one of the songs from the work that survived to be a hit single, illuminated the journey, as did "Surf's Up" and "Good Vibrations" in all its sonic glory, now with alternative lyrics to the 1966 single.

The show concluded on another irresistible confetti-shower of early, rocking hits such as "Surfin' U.S.A.," "Fun, Fun, Fun" and "Help Me Rhonda," before Brian and some bandmates returned to offer a poignant "Love & Mercy." It may be a late chapter in Wilson's story, but this is far more than a postscript.

– Paul Sexton, London

February 23, 2004
Telegraph UK

A tangled, glorious symphony

Very rarely has the anticipation for a show been as tense as for this series of concerts by the former Beach Boy Brian Wilson. Last year's shows - based around the legendary Pet Sounds album - were a triumph, especially given the reports that Wilson was a broken man, unable to leave his own home.

Brian Wilson: one of the greatest composers of the 20th century

Yet even though those performances were ecstatically well-received, there were no guarantees of his mental health. Wilson has been a virtual recluse for decades and it is widely held that the "great lost album" Smile - which he performed on Friday night for the first time - had been instrumental in his breakdown.

Wilson cut a bizarre figure when the curtain came up. Surrounded by younger, tanned, hipper musicians, he looked almost preternaturally white and still - and slightly confused. As the first few acoustic renditions of early Beach Boys classics went by, though, it became clear that his voice is still sweet and vulnerable and that he still has a feeling for, and pride in, his formidable works.

The first half of the show consisted of non-Smile material. Wilson's voice may be somewhat cracked - and his memory for lyrics assisted by prompter screens - but he came visibly more to life with each classic, particularly the blissfully optimistic surf-pop of California Girls and a heartbreaking God Only Knows.

Nothing, though, could prepare us for the second half. From the opening of Heroes and Villains, Wilson was a transformed man. Though still reading his lyrics, he sat taller, sang louder and waved his arms about to conduct the band. The atmosphere was electric, and the music echoed everything from Philip Glass to Kurt Weill to Chuck Berry.

It's near impossible to pick out individual songs, as the whole thing was all a tangled, glorious symphony of celebration and sadness - though the comical Vegetables and a transcendent Good Vibrations were incredible.

All right, Wilson did seem a man apart from the stage around him, but the glory of late Beach Boys was always the contrast between the fragility of his voice and his vast, sweeping songs and arrangements.

Last night we witnessed that and so, so much more. Leonard Bernstein once proclaimed Brian Wilson one of the greatest composers of the 20th century: he was not wrong.

Februrary 23, 2004
Evening Standard

Brian Wilson "With a happy album cover, the really happy sounds inside and a happy in-store display piece, you can't miss. We're sure to sell a million units in January 1967," said the sorely mistaken record-company man in an advertisement sent out to music stores in late 1966, for the Beach Boys album Smile. That Brian Wilson's feverishly anticipated follow-up to Pet Sounds came that close to an official release makes it all the more extraordinary that it was only heard in its entirety for the first time this weekend, 37 years late.

In the intervening years, when Wilson became a 24-stone recluse ravaged by mental illness, drugs and overeating, Pet Sounds remained forever his artistic pinnacle, and Smile became the most obsessed-over lost album in pop history. No one has ever pinpointed a definitive reason for the shelving of Wilson's "teenage symphony to God", but if it had met its proposed release date, Smile would have appeared four months before The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper, and fans hypothesise that it would to this day be rightly regarded as the true pinnacle of psychedelic innovation. Finally, Wilson, 61, with a significantly weaker voice, blank eyes and an almost expressionless face, proved the fantasists correct.

As a concept album, Smile is certainly more coherent than Pepper, weaving its twin themes of Americana and the elements extensively through lengthy suites of dizzyingly ambitious music. Eighteen musicians, the core formed by LA group The Wondermints, dashed around the stationary Wilson, frequently changing instruments mid-song and playing everything from Polynesian ukulele to a power-drill. There was spiritual beauty, as on a cappella opener Our Prayer and the softly swooning Wind Chimes, and silly humour, including the animal noises of Barnyard and wholesome ode to carrots Vege-Tables.

For Mrs O'Leary's Cow, the roaring "fire" part of side two's elements suite, the string and brass section donned toy red fire helmets, just as they had at Smile's most famous recording session. Songs already familiar from their appearance in half-finished forms on later Beach Boys albums, such as Surf 's Up and Heroes and Villains, took on a powerful new resonance as they appeared complete in their intended surroundings. As a whole, it was, as they probably would have said in the Sixties, mind-blowing. When Smile's lyricist, Van Dyke Parks, appeared on stage for a joyous encore of more established classics, he and Wilson received a rapturous standing ovation. It went a small way towards meeting the acclaim that the pair's vaulting imaginations should have received almost 40 years ago.

Februrary 23, 2004
Daily Telegraph

Forty years give former Beach Boy something to smile about

Former Beach Boy's missing masterpiece is worth the 40-year wait, writes Joe Muggs Very rarely has the anticipation for a show been as tense as for this series of concerts by the former Beach Boy Brian Wilson. Last year's shows - based around the legendary Pet Sounds album - were a triumph, especially given the reports that he was a broken man, unable to leave his own home let alone perform in packed concert halls. Yet still there were no guarantees of his mental health.

Wilson has been a virtual recluse for decades and it is widely held that the "Great Lost Album" Smile - which he performed last night for the first time - was instrumental in his breakdown. Smile (Dumb Angel), to give it its full title, was conceived by Wilson in late 1966 as "a teenage symphony to God". Hyped up by the success of the Pet Sounds album and the Good Vibrations single, and by the knowledge that the Beatles were working on Sergeant Pepper, Wilson set out to write the ultimate pop record. Working with the enigmatic lyricist Van Dyke Parks, he intended to create a document of the American soul through the 20th century. Inevitably, the project ran into problems.

The initial song-writing sessions were conducted with all the participants lying on the floor, under the influence of $2,000 of Afghani hashish which Wilson hoped would inspire the process, as well as various types of psychedelics and prescription amphetamines. The atmosphere was not helped by the conflicted image of the Beach Boys: the rock establishment simultaneously respected them for their recent output and reviled them as "squares" for their squeaky clean past. This combination of drugs, paranoia and acclaim led Wilson's thought process to become increasingly fragmented, bizarre and obsessive. Amid this paranoia and competition, the hugely ambitious sessions broke down - as did Wilson - and the song-cycle has never seen the light of day except in fragments on subsequent, inferior, albums, or as bootlegs of varying quality. Last night was the first time the material has been fully exposed.

Wilson cut a bizarre figure when the curtain came up. Surrounded by younger, tanned, hipper musicians, he looked almost preternaturally white and still - and slightly confused. As the first few acoustic renditions of early Beach Boys classics went by, though, it became clear that his sweet, vulnerable voice is still intact, and that he still has a feeling for and pride in his formidable works. The first half of the show consisted of non-Smile material. Though Wilson's voice may be somewhat cracked - and his memory for lyrics assisted by prompter screens - he came visibly more to life with each classic, particularly California Girls and a heart-breaking God Only Knows.

Nothing, though, could prepare us for the second half. From the opening of Heroes and Villains, Wilson was a transformed man. Though still reading his lyrics, he sat taller, sang louder and waved his arms about to conduct the band. The atmosphere was truly electric, and the music echoed everything from Philip Glass to Kurt Weill to Chuck Berry. It's nigh impossible to pick out songs, as it was all a glorious, tangled symphony of celebration and sadness - though the comical Vegetables and a transcendent Good Vibrations were incredible. All right, Wilson did seem a man apart from the stage around him, but the glory of late Beach Boys was always the contrast between the fragility of his voice and his songs and arrangements. Last night we witnessed that and so, so much more. Leonard Bernstein said Brian Wilson was one of the greatest composers of the 20th century: he was not wrong.

Februrary 23, 2004
BBC News

A triumphant Brian Wilson has performed his great "lost" masterpiece Smile live for the first time.

The prevailing mood was nervous excitement as the clock ticked down to Wilson's second UK show at London's Royal Festival Hall.

Expectations were high among fans milling around the bar as reports filtered through of a five-minute ovation for his live Smile debut the previous night. Wearing their newly-bought £24 Smile T-shirts and clutching programmes (a snip at a tenner), the generation-spanning audience filed - smiling, mostly - into the auditorium. A stage curtain dropped to reveal the 61-year-old Wilson - all in black, his grey hair swept back - perched on a stool, flanked tightly on all sides by his 10-strong backing band. Wilson, whose live career has been dogged by stage fright, sat stiffly and seemed ill at ease as they worked through a few lame jokes and forced grins - presumably aimed at least in part at relaxing the genius-in-residence.

But just as it was danger of descending into down-home parody, the a capella harmonies began and - thankfully - you knew that Brian Wilson was in the house. What followed was a treat as Wilson visibly loosened up with a few of his earlier compositions, among them the beautiful In My Room and his songwriting genesis, Surfer Girl. A few tunes in and he became as animated as he would get all evening, waving his arms from side to side to the rhythm, by now centre-stage at his Yamaha keyboard.

Wilson re-emerged after an interval, his backing musicians from LA band The Wondermints augmented by a string quintet and a full brass section. It was Smile time. And so the full suite of songs from rock's unreleased masterpiece - Wilson's "teenage symphony to God" - was unfurled in its considerable glory, for only the second time.

Beginning with the close-harmony singing of Our Prayer, the excitement built with an epic, multi-section take of Heroes and Villains - a mini-symphony in itself distilling Wilson's musical vision of the old Wild West, complete with saloon bar pianos, horses' hooves and native American chants. Over the following half hour, the Wilson credentials were all in evidence: Cabinessence with its extraordinary soaring pop-operatics; the playful Vege-Tables (was that a green pepper being tackled by the backing singer?); and the majestic melancholy of Surf's Up. With a nod to Smile folklore the five-piece Stockholm Strings and Horns donned fire helmets for the Elements suite. The legendary sequence climaxed with a celebratory Good Vibrations. There were few surprises for anyone familiar with the many Smile bootlegs or the Beach Boys box set - merely the delight of hearing the album as a coherent whole in the way its 24-year-old prodigy had intended 37 years earlier.

Like the Pet Sounds shows of two years ago, much of the pleasure derives from the precision and note-perfect replication of Wilson's intricate melodies by The Wondermints, led by chief Wilson devotee Darian Sahanaja.

It all resulted in more ovations than a Tory party conference, including one reserved for Wilson's revered Smile lyricist, the silver-haired Van Dyke Parks. Even without the night's centrepiece there was plenty to enjoy as Wilson reeled off some of the 1960s' most durable hits - California Girls, Help Me Rhonda, God Only Knows, Do It Again. But this was no nostalgia show; rather, a relevant contemporary reading of a rock opus, performed by a much-loved figure recognised by generations of fans as one of the finest musicians of his time.

Nearly 40 years after being pilloried by fellow musicians and rejected by record label bosses, Wilson and Smile have re-emerged triumphant. And like many great artists misunderstood and misrepresented in their prime, Wilson has proved - with courage and a unique modesty - that he was ahead of his time.

Februrary 23, 2004
Guardian Unlimited

Brian Wilson, Royal Festival Hall, London (****)

So how good, finally, is Smile, the great lost song cycle that Brian Wilson kept the world waiting 37 years to hear? The only possible answer, after Friday night's world premiere in London, is that it is better than anyone dared hope. Multiple spontaneous ovations were the reward for the former Beach Boy and his musicians, whose pristine performance breathed life into a 45-minute work previously known only through various shattered and dispersed fragments.

Everything about the evening was remarkable, from the moment a small, grey-haired man in a bowtie and a sleeveless cardigan received a standing ovation merely for taking his seat in the stalls. That was Van Dyke Parks, whose oblique, allusive lyrics for Smile provoked the internecine warfare that led to the abandonment of the project.

The concert began with a wonderfully unexpected gesture, the musicians clustering round Wilson to re-create the mood of the Beach Boys' Party album in lovely versions of In My Room, Please Let Me Wonder and Good Timin', accompanied by acoustic guitars and bongos. The more elaborate treatments of California Girls, Dance Dance Dance, Don't Worry Baby, Wouldn't It Be Nice, God Only Knows and many others completed the first half.

Smile occupied the whole of the second half, in a version reconstructed by Darian Sahanaja, with the assistance of Wilson and Parks. A member of the Wondermints, a Los Angeles band who provide the nucleus of Wilson's current 18-strong ensemble, Sahanaja approached the task with a thoroughness and sensitivity that ensured all its many themes were slotted together with a seamless perfection. Even the familiar sections - including Heroes and Villains, Surf's Up and Cabin Essence - sounded utterly refreshed.

Our Prayer provided a lustrous a cappella prelude, but it was the astonishing variety of instrumental texture that constantly took the ear. Banjos, calliopes, Swanee whistles, tack pianos, fruity trombones, a cackling trumpet and a Polynesian ukelele made it seem like the grandest of American symphonies, with Wilson the natural heir to Charles Ives.

The composer sat impassively as his playful humour came to the fore, notably when the musicians made barnyard noises and forsook their instruments for toys before great waves of glorious harmonies or a sudden burst of Palm Court strings would send the music charging off in another direction. The string and horn players donned toy firemen's hats for Fire, just as Wilson had invited their predecessors to do in 1967, and the whole piece ended in triumph with the churning chorale, juddering cellos and whooshing theremin of Good Vibrations, which can never, in all its long life, have been engulfed in a more ecstatic reception.

February 22, 2004
BBC News

Ovation for Wilson's lost album

Smile holds a particular fascination for Wilson fans

Beach Boys co-founder Brian Wilson gained a five-minute standing ovation after performing his lost album Smile for the first time on Friday night. Wilson brought the house down at the Royal Festival Hall after his forgotten work was finally performed. The 61-year-old suffered an emotional breakdown during the making of the album in the 1960s, which was not completed and went unreleased.

Wilson is due to play a further five nights at the London venue. Grown men wept as the 61-year-old performed a set of around 20 songs, including classics such as Wouldn't It Be Nice and California Girls. Wilson opened the sell-out concert with an intimate unplugged set accompanied by his 11-strong band.

They then played a selection of surf classics including Sloop John B and Dance Dance Dance, before Wilson played Smile in its entirety. Smile was concluded with the pop classic Good Vibrations, and after a standing ovation Wilson rocked the concert hall to the sound of party classics such as I Get Around, Surfin' USA and Barbara Ann. Shows in Bristol, Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool and Birmingham will follow the London performances.

February 22, 2004
The Sctosman

'The enraptured audience were suddenly transported'

Stephan Dalton

FOR decades it has been acclaimed as pop music’s lost masterpiece, the holy grail of rock and the best album never made. Smile, by the Beach Boys, has passed into legend since it was abandoned, half-finished, in 1967 amid drug-fuelled paranoia, inter-band strife and intense competition with the Beatles for the throne of popular music.

Stuck in limbo for 37 years, the album has finally been unveiled to adoring acolytes, frothing critics and celebrity fans by its creator, Brian Wilson. It allows a definitive judgment to be made about Smile - masterpiece or hype?

Wilson was a 24-year-old maverick genius who had composed more than 50 albums’ worth of songs by the time Smile came to him. He was at the height of his powers, having recently completed Pet Sounds, which still regularly tops critical ‘best album of all time’ charts. But his rare gift came with a heavy price tag of mental instability.

During the Smile sessions he finally cracked, scrapped the project and took to his bed for two years. His punishing work rate, combined with his fragile temperament, intense family friction and large quantities of drugs, plunged him into a terrible abyss of manic depression, ballooning weight and psychological problems for the next two decades.

And so only on Friday did Wilson go public with his lost masterpiece, giving it its world premiere at London’s Royal Festival Hall. Wilson sat centre stage, looking mildly bewildered.

The audience spanned all ages from 20 to 60 and beyond. Wilson’s timeless, beautifully crafted, mildly infantilised romanticism appeals to the little boy in every man. Arrested development never sounded so sweet.

Thronged by a young 10-piece band and backed by an eight-piece mini-orchestra, Wilson seemed comfortable in a slightly vacant way. The show opened with a jokey singalong that felt rather forced in its back-porch folksiness. But even so, the creamy a cappella harmonies of the classic solitude anthem ‘In My Room’ and the intoxicated paean to romantic idealism, ‘Please Let Me Wonder’, cut straight to the emotional quick.

The enraptured audience were suddenly transported to a sunshine noir paradise of wistful yearning and oddly innocent, almost pre-sexual notions of love. Welcome to Wilsonworld: two-thirds Walt Disney, one-third David Lynch.

At his best, grooving away to his old Beach Boys hits, the 61-year-old Wilson could have passed for a Hollywood matinee idol in the Martin Sheen mould. Only when the spotlights caught him full-on did he resemble an animatronic Ronald Reagan peering through a fog of senile dementia. With his permanently glazed expression and heavy reliance on an autocue for lyrical inspiration, it was never quite clear whether Wilson even knew where he was. Like Ozzy Osbourne, whatever hellish depths he visited at his most chemically crazed, he clearly never quite came home again.

But even at his most drug-dependent, Wilson remained one of pop’s great innovators. Smile was composed in 1966 in a rapture of creative invention after Brian had freed the Beach Boys from their hard-driving manager father, Murry Wilson, an act of Oedipal self-assertion which helped propel the emotionally volatile young maestro over the edge.

While the band were touring without him, Wilson recruited the 22-year-old novice lyricist Van Dyke Parks to help realise his dream of a "teenage symphony to God", constructed as a single grand tapestry of defiantly, cheerfully American folk sounds and psychedelic sound effects. It was a bold act of grandiose pop ambition that left Wilson’s record company, Capitol, running scared.

At least, that is one story. Received wisdom among adoring critics is that Smile simply proved too brave and innovative for Wilson’s philistine paymasters and mercenary band mates, all of whom wanted their golden goose to keep laying three-minute pop hits by the dozen. But the full story behind the album’s perpetually stalled release is a lot more complex and ambivalent.

Firstly, Parks left the recording sessions early following hostile reactions from the other Beach Boys, especially Wilson’s cousin and long-time sparring partner Mike Love.

Meanwhile, Capitol printed up 500,000 album covers and even scheduled a release date, January 1, 1967. But by then, band and label were heading for a massive legal action over allegedly unpaid royalties. The release was delayed and Wilson, without Parks to fight his corner, apparently lost his nerve.

The arrival of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, according to pop folklore, finally persuaded the competitive boy genius to abandon Smile in defeat. Ironically, Paul McCartney features on the Smile recordings, dropping by his friendly rivals’ studio to crunch carrots on a particularly eccentric track, ‘Vege-Tables’.

During almost four decades in limbo, the mythology around Smile has swelled almost to Kennedy conspiracy dimensions. Stories about the songwriting sessions in Wilson’s customised home sandpit, built so he could feel close to the beach without leaving home. Stories about the firemen’s helmets worn by his musicians to get them in the mood for a track called ‘Fire’, only to freak Wilson out when the session coincided with several large fires across California. And stories, of course, about the immense quantities of LSD and marijuana that helped give birth to the Doctor Seuss soundworld behind the album.

Although available in bootleg versions for more than a decade, Smile has only resurfaced in this official form thanks to the enthusiasm of Wilson’s young LA-based band, multi- The Wondermints.

Following the same band’s highly successful concert tour with a live reading of the classic Pet Sounds two years ago, the next logical step was Smile. It was the Wondermints who tracked down the almost intact session tapes from 1966, then digitally re-assembled them into a fragrant sonic collage as close as possible to Wilson’s original vision. Parks and Wilson both oversaw the process.

In this first public airing, Smile certainly sounded unorthodox and steeped in offbeat glory, a crazy-paving collage of song fragments and Looney Tunes jingles, all topped and tailed by the lush liquid majesty of ‘Heroes and Villains’ and a thunderous full-bore romp through ‘Good Vibrations’. But time has clearly diluted its adventurous edge, and some of its elements feel merely quirky. It was fun, and certainly historic, but much of it also sounded like whimsical juvenilia. Smile was unquestionably innovative for its era but it is not difficult to see why Wilson’s label and fellow Beach Boys balked at releasing it. This may get me disbarred from the Rock Critics’ Union, but I’m with the band on this one. The good news is that Smile was, at least, not a disappointment. The better news, however, is that Wilson has composed dozens of much better tunes than these, none of which has been lost for decades, and it was these pop treasures which bookended the evening’s main event: exquisite teen-dream confections like ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’, ‘Don’t Worry Baby’, ‘Barbara Ann’ and scores more, all as light as a perfumed breeze and as sad as a dying sunset. Songs bursting with grace and wisdom and wonder, but still contained within three or four minutes of pure pop.

Legends about Great Lost Albums make great headlines, but it is in these miniature gems that Brian Wilson’s true legacy resides. And that is reason enough to smile.

Brian Wilson performs Smile at Glasgow Clyde Auditorium on March 4.

February 22, 2004
The Observer

Go on then, Smile:
Brian Wilson's long-lost classic had its first airing in 38 years on Friday. Was it worth the wait?

Caspar Llewellyn Smith

Brian Wilson
Royal Festival Hall, London

It was the Holy Grail of rock music, the album that would have knocked spots off Sergeant Pepper had it ever been released. Famously, Brian Wilson abandoned making Smile in 1966 once the Hawaiian grass that he had been smoking in a tepee in his living room convinced him that his masterpiece just wasn't right for the times. Tracks from the sessions did surface in various guises: 'Good Vibrations' and a truncated version of 'Heroes and Villains' as smash hit Beach Boys singles; 'Vege-Tables' in a different mix on the group's half-cocked LP Smiley Smile; the extraordinary 'Do You Like Worms' on a 1993 box set. But even those with bootlegs purporting to contain much original material had never heard Smile as Wilson and his collaborator Van Dyke Parks seem originally to have conceived it - not until its first live performance at the Royal Festival Hall on Friday night.

It might be said straight away that it was an evening that validated claims made on behalf of Wilson's genius, and went as far as it could have, perhaps, to standing up the legend of the record. But the extraordinary warmth with which the audience greeted Wilson's appearance - standing ovation followed standing ovation throughout - was also a reflection of all sorts of conflicting impulses. Chief among these was gratitude, mixed with relief, for the fact that we should ever have heard this music, as the very making of Smile had precipitated its 24-year-old progenitor's descent into decades of mental turmoil.

It was only with the encouragement of his wife, Melinda, and key associates such as Darian Sahanaja of Los Angeles group the Wondermints that Wilson toured with Pet Sounds two years ago, the masterpiece he made before embarking on Smile, an event that paved the way for this. Then, he still seemed a painfully fragile figure, and tonight he fluffed his introduction to several songs, while the band encouraged the audience to demonstrate their love for him vocally throughout the first half. That half also saw him tantalising the crowd of obsessives unforgivably, as he didn't launch straight into the main event. Rather, the curtain lifted to reveal a pallid figure clad in black who resembled no one so much as Tony Soprano, surrounded by 10 henchmen dedicated to his protection. This extended to covering for Wilson as he struggled with the harmonies on an opening acoustic set and then full band versions of classics and more recent numbers.

Part of the appeal of Brian Wilson's music has always been its vulnerability, and songs such as 'In My Room' and 'God Only Knows', which did their proverbial shiver-down-the-spine thing, bettered the sympathy felt for him when he hesitantly interrupted the scripted banter of the band. But the Wondermints themselves sounded uncharacteristically heavy in the beat, and even 'California Girls', with which Wilson wrote a poetic advertisement for a New World where Annette Funicello lay at the furthest extremity of civilisation with a pot of board wax, sounded almost fashioned for a Going Places commercial.

It was with Smile that Wilson's ambitions really soared, and with the help of his lyricist Parks, who was in the audience tonight and cheered wildly himself, he set out to create a work that celebrated the innocence of a new nation: songs segued into each other, the portrait of the Wild West that was 'Heroes and Villains' melting into 'Do You Like Worms' with its poetic allusion to the Pilgrim fathers; then on, via 'Barnyard' and 'The Old Master Painter' to 'Cabinessence'.

The scribbled notes of this reviewer, accounting for the rest of the performance as it encompassed 'Surf's Up' and tracks known to bootleggers as 'The Elements Suite', contain umpteen exclamation marks, relating both to oddities in the expected sequencing of the show and, finally, the brilliance of the band. Smile was revealed as a majestic work, full of warmth and playfulness. And, most satisfyingly, the string and horn sections that joined the ensemble adopted firemen's helmets for 'Mrs O'Leary's Cow', following the example of the musicians who made the original recording.

Inevitably, the obsessives will quibble: it was wrong to end with 'Good Vibrations', however perfectly rendered. When Wilson then shuffled off stage, he gave every suggestion that the entire experience had been akin to pulling teeth.

But of course, the reason why Smile has been so mythologised is precisely because it never did exist: perhaps passages and refrains were repeated from one song to the next as they were tonight, because Wilson wanted to create an epic tone poem, and perhaps it was because he was so muddled by pot that he never settled on definitive versions of different tracks. The Smile that the Festival Hall heard could never have been the Smile of 1966, and to fans the point is that, until now, they have been free to imagine their own version, a record of unparalleled and numinous beauty that would have changed musical history. But this seemed as close to an echt version as we are ever likely to have, and as such was very heaven.

Smile continues at the Royal Festival Hall until Friday then tours, ending at Birmingham Symphony Hall (Mon 8 Mar).

February 22, 2004
Independent.uk.com

Brian Wilson, Royal Festival Hall, London

This is the most ambitious exploration of the boundaries of pop music

By Simon Price

"You guys in the audience have better cameras and recording gear than the people doing it officially," jokes Jeffrey Foskett, Brian Wilson's corpulent and genial bandleader. "And we expect to hear it on the internet tonight." Foskett knows whereof he speaks. The Beach Boys' unreleased 1967 masterpiece Smile is the most bootlegged, most sought-after, most mythologised album in the history of rock'n'roll.

Wilson once said that completing Smile would be "like raising the Titanic". His current keyboardist, Darian Sahanaja, calls it "the holy grail of rock'n'roll". By using old 1960s tapes and 21st-century computers, Wilson, Sahanaja and Van Dyke Parks, the lyricist who collaborated on the original project, have succeeded in that task.

Friday 20 February 2004 was the night the world finally got to hear some kind of definitive Smile. The show is topped and tailed by a couple of hits sets, and finds Brian in fine form, sitting behind his autocue/keyboard, clicking his fingers and frowning with concentration. His voice, never the sweetest, is as poignantly limited as it ever was.

But when Wilson orders the house lights up, and introduces "my friend, Van Dyke", and a small silver-haired man receives a standing ovation in the stalls, there's no question about the main event.

From the Hawaiian chants of "Prayer" onwards, Smile has a potent effect on the listener. Inspired by the young Wilson's growing fascinations with astrology, numerology and the occult, and bearing more in common with artistic movements than with the prevailing currents of pop, it remains, 37 years later, the most ambitious exploration of the boundaries of pop music. You feel as though your brain is about to explode with wonder at the possibilities of music. It's a feeling akin to a religious epiphany.

The three highlights are, inevitably, the full nine minutes of "Heroes and Villains", the beautiful "Surf's Up" and a staggeringly powerful "Good Vibrations" (with alternate lyrics). But Smile was never a song-based suite in the traditional sense. Skittish and episodic, the experience is like watching an orchestra performing a film score. There are sections lifted from Sinatra's "I Wanna Be Around", "You Are My Sunshine", "Barnyard" and "Vega-Tables" ("If you brought a big brown bag of 'em home/I'd jump up and down and hope you'd toss me a carrot"), both of which corroborate the theory that Smile was intended partly as a comedy.

As the opus ends, Van Dyke Parks smiles a smiley smile, points at Brian Wilson's heart, then at his own. They slap hands, and they're gone.

February 21, 2004
Independent.co.uk

Brian Wilson, Royal Festival Hall, London

After years of delays and crisis, Wilson finally smiles

By Keith Shadwick

Since it was announced last summer in the wake of Brian Wilson's triumphant staging of his masterpiece, the Beach Boys' 1966 Pet Sounds album, this event has been anticipated like no other in rock. For not only is this the first night of this particular event, this is the first time anywhere that this music has been played complete in public.

Smile became the great casualty of early 1967, much like Wilson himself, whose failure to finish the follow-up album to Pet Sounds that winter (the record company had even produced the record sleeves in readiness for release) led to a personal and creative crisis that took him decades to overcome.

When you consider that this album had not only "Good Vibrations", "Heroes and Villains" (in a much more elaborate version to that eventually released as a single), "Wind Chimes" and "Vegetables" on it, but also "Cabinessence" and "Surf's Up", then you begin to realise just what a disaster it was that the original concept slipped from Wilson's control.

But this evening at the Royal Festival Hall he was here to put it right. Wilson had even been back in touch with the lyricist Van Dyke Parks, his collaborator on the original album project, in an effort to tidy up the loose ends and keep the integrity of the original vision. So things boded well.

Even before a note had been played, you were aware that this was a special evening. A few moments of darkness and then Brian Wilson and the band were revealed, gathered in a semi-circle on stage. A few hits, including "Good Timin' " and "In My Room", followed in acoustic fashion, then the full show was launched.

Wilson and his nine-piece band delivered a first-half set that gave exact replicas of a series of Beach Boys' classics, from "Catch A Wave" to "God Only Knows". What impressed most was the perfection with which each song was delivered. Wilson even had a small string section on stage for a couple of numbers.

Smile took up the entire second half of the concert. It was an overwhelming performance because all the disparate pieces of this amazing work that people had known and treasured, scattered as they were across so much of the Beach Boys' output, fitted together in a perfect mosaic.

This was a huge panorama that can only be compared to Bach in the way the intricacies interwove in wondrous counterpoint, spinning a web that embraced an entire vision. There were three suites of music, with the most touching part arriving when "Surf's Up" was revealed to be preceded by "Child is Father of the Man", anticipating its miraculous recapitulation at the song's end.

Smile finished with "Good Vibrations" and a standing ovation. They came back for encores, but these were only collective shouts of exultation at what the musicians had pulled off.

This series of concerts runs until 27 February, but don't bother trying to book - they were sold out months ago. But maybe the difficulties preventing the issue of the original recordings, with all its flaws, will be overcome and we'll have a real embarrassment of riches on our hands in 2004. Only 37 years late. Worth the wait? How can you even ask ...

February 21, 2004
Guradian Unlimited

37 years on, fans finally hear lost work by master of pop

Richard Williams

Pop music's great lost masterpiece was revealed in all its eccentric splendour in London last night when Brian Wilson, the 61-year-old founder of the Beach Boys, presented the world premiere of Smile, a 1967 project which was intended to top the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band but was abandoned in a welter of psychotropic drugs, warring egos and shattered confidence.

Multiple ovations were the reward for a pristine performance of the 45-minute song cycle by Wilson and his 18 musicians, who reproduced the groundbreaking complexity and sophistication of a work inspired by the friendly but intense transatlantic rivalry between the Beach Boys and the Beatles at a time when pop music was evolving at an unprecedented rate.

Wilson spent hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars in a Hollywood recording studio assembling Smile. To the outside world, the 24-year-old Californian was a pop genius at the top of his form: a year earlier he had created Pet Sounds, an album that still appears at the top of most all-time-greatest polls, and Good Vibrations, an epic single which sold millions around the world.

The sudden collapse of the Smile project mirrored Wilson's own disintegration. At what appeared to be the zenith of the Beach Boys' popularity, he entered a period of withdrawal lasting 30 years, during which he was in and out of psychotherapy and made only infrequent appearances on the concert stage and in the recording studio.

Two years ago, however, he returned to action at the head of a band of younger musicians devoted to recreating the most difficult and adventurous of his compositions. When he arrived in London two years ago to perform Pet Sounds in its entirety, Wilson received standing ovations suffused with a degree of affection few performers can have experienced.

His audiences fully understood not just the fundamental nature of his contribution to the evolution of pop music, but the troubled nature of his personal life.

Poignant

That warmth was reproduced last night at the first of five eagerly awaited concerts at the Festival Hall. Once again Wilson was to be found sitting at an electric piano whose keys he barely brushed, but his fans were neither shocked nor deterred by the diminished vocal powers of a man who once played a leading role in pop's greatest harmony group. In his grainy, sometimes quavering voice, his listeners could hear a poignant reflection of everything that has happened to him in the four decades since he brought a mythical California to life with songs such as I Get Around, California Girls and Fun Fun Fun.

Last night, however, was about much more than respectful nostalgia. Smile, which lay in ruins for 37 years, was to be reassembled and presented in something as close as possible to its planned form.

With Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations, Wilson had demonstrated his increasing mastery of recording techniques, exploiting editing and overdubbing facilities to create the impression of vast instrumental and vocal resources. Obsessed by his discoveries, and tired of travelling with the band, he immersed himself in laying the foundations of his masterpiece.

The touchingly romantic lyrics of Pet Sounds had been produced by Tony Asher, a Hollywood advertising copywriter; for his new project, Wilson turned to Van Dyke Parks, a 22-year-old prodigy who took his tunes and added words of great poetic resonance but little connection with anything that had previously emerged from the mouths of the Beach Boys. A song called Surf's Up, for example, began: "A diamond necklace played the pawn / Hand in hand some drummed along / To a handsome man and baton."

When Wilson appeared on a national TV show and sang Surf's Up alone at the piano, Leonard Bernstein was moved to describe it as "beautiful even in its obscurity".

But when the rest of the Beach Boys returned from their latest foreign tour, not all of them were delighted by what they found. Love, Wilson's cousin and the group's lead singer, was particularly disconcerted, aggressively inviting Parks to elucidate some of the lines he was going to sing. Against the wishes of other members of the group, Love's opinion prevailed. Smile was summarily abandoned, its demise hastened when Wilson felt that by recording a piece called Fire he had precipitated a rash of conflagrations in the vicinity of the studio.

Although he had sent his record company a list of the tracks he intended to include on Smile, and although they printed almost half a million sleeves, he never got as far as assembling a final version. As the legend grew, so bootleggers stepped into the breach, working with tapes that had found their way out of the studio archives and attempting to create something faithful to Wilson's original conception.

After Parks had received an ovation just for taking his seat in the stalls, last night's concert began with an imaginative recreation of the mood of the Beach Boys' Party album, an informal singalong with the musicians grouped around Wilson, who led them through lovely versions of In My Room and Please Let Me Wonder, accompanied by acoustic guitars and bongos, before moving into the more elaborate treatments of California Girls, Dance Dance Dance, Don't Worry Baby, Wouldn't It Be Nice, God Only Knows and many others.

The second half was devoted to a 45-minute arrangement of Smile, divided into three movements in which even the familiar sections were made to seem new. The a cappella Our Prayer provided a lustrous prelude, but it was the variety of instrumental texture that constantly took the ear. Banjos, calliopes, Swanee whistles, tack pianos, fruity trombones, cackling trumpets and a Polynesian ukelele made it seem like the grandest of American symphonies, and Wilson the natural heir to Charles Ives.

The composer sat impassively as his humour came to the fore, notably when the musicians made barnyard noises and forsook instruments for toys. But great waves of harmonies or a sudden burst of Palm Court strings would send the music charging off in another direction, each one seemingly more diverting than the last. The string and horn players donned firemen's hats for Fire, just as Wilson had invited their predecessors to do in 1967, and the whole piece ended in triumph with the churning chorale, juddering cellos and whooshing theremin of Good Vibrations, which can never in its long life have been engulfed in a more ecstatic reception.

Februrary 21, 2004
Times Online

Brian Wilson

By Stephen Dalton

HE MAY have taken more drugs than anyone else in the Sixties, but Brian Wilson is still a handsome man. At his best, grooving away to his old Beach Boys hits at the Royal Festival Hall yesterday, the psychologically fragile 61-year-old pop veteran could have passed for a Hollywood icon in the Jeff Bridges mould. Only when the spotlights caught him full-on did he resemble Leonid Brezhnev after a series of severe strokes.

Performing with a ten-piece band backed by a Swedish string-and-brass octet, Wilson was in London for the historic live debut of his great lost album Smile, a natural progression from Pet Sounds in the UK two years ago.

Recorded through a druggie haze in 1966, this mythic piece of pop folklore was mysteriously shelved for more than four decades. The critical party line is that Smile is Wilson’s buried masterpiece, a revolutionary “teenage symphony to God” that proved too brave and innovative for his philistine record label and mercenary band mates. The real story is more mundane, but the legend of Wilson as a misunderstood genius is appealing.

Finally receiving its first public airing last night, Smile certainly still sounded unusual, a 40-minute crazy-paving collage of song fragments and Loony Tunes jingles, all bookended by the lush glory of Heroes and Villains and the rapturous warble of Good Vibrations. But with its baroque rock-opera trimmings and barnyard animal grunts, much of it also sounded like whimsical juvenilia. It was clearly adventurous for its era but it is not difficult to see why Wilson’s label and fellow Beach Boys balked at releasing it.

The reason Smile is merely an interesting footnote to Wilson’s career was made eminently plain during the rest of the show in which he and his band dusted off bittersweet dream-pop classics by the score. Exquisite versions of In My Room, Wouldn’t It Be Nice and Don’t Worry Baby — all impeccably crafted masterpieces in their own right, and yet all contained within three or four minutes of pure pop.

Mad genius stories make great headlines, but it is in these miniature gems that Brian Wilson’s true legacy resides. He has just waited half a lifetime to find the grace and wisdom to do them justice.

February 20, 2004
Sunday Mail

Brian's Back With A SMiLE

SIXTIES pop legend Brian Wilson received a five minute standing ovation as he performed his lost masterpiece Smile for the first time.The former Beach Boys star abandoned work on the album in the late 1960s after a mental breakdown.He's now gone back to the mastertapes and plans to finally release Smile.

And he brought the house down at London's Royal Festival Hall on Friday as the forgotten work finally Hero: Wilson on stagereceived its world premiere. Highlights included an instrumental section with electric screwdrivers, football rattles and loudhailers. Fans had flocked from around the world to hear Smile, which Wilson played in its entirety in the second half of the show. The new music displayed his trademark combination of lush harmonies and creative percussion. Earlier, grown men wept as the 61-year-old played classic tracks such as Good Vibrations.

Wilson will perform Smile at the SECC, Glasgow, on March 4.

ile at the SECC, Glasgow, on March 4.

February 20, 2004
The Los Angeles Times

He Can't Suppress a 'Smile'

There's no surf, no sand, no little deuce coupes and only a couple of California girls in sight of the North Hollywood recording studio. Inside, the 61-year-old architect of "Good Vibrations," "Surfin' U.S.A." and "Fun, Fun, Fun" sits stoically at his keyboard, surrounded by a small army of musicians, and stares into one of two video monitors.

Song lyrics crawl across the screens as the other performers, most of whom weren't born when Brian Wilson's songs topped the charts four decades ago, serve up the densely layered vocal harmonies and rainbow of instrumental colors that his compositions require.

Wilson frequently looks away from the monitors and occasionally switches them off, but likes them nearby as a safety net. Who can blame him? The songs he's working on aren't the familiar rock hits he created with the Beach Boys, those relentlessly sunny tunes that painted a fantasy of Southern California life as an endless summer of perfect waves, hot rods and blond beauties. Instead, he's putting the finishing touches on a work he dreamed up 38 years ago, at the height of his creative rivalry with the Beatles.

After years of wrestling with depression and drug and alcohol abuse, after half a lifetime of trying to forget his fabled lost masterwork, Wilson can smile again. "This feels so good," he says to a reporter when the session is over. "So good I can't believe it." Tonight, he'll unveil "Smile" at a concert in England, where fans have long accorded him the heroic status that Americans reserved for the Beatles. Paul McCartney is expected to join him on stage during at least one of six sold-out shows at London's Royal Festival Hall. Over the next three weeks, Wilson will give 16 "Smile" concerts in Britain, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and France. He plans a U.S. tour in the fall to coincide with the CD release of the newly recorded work.

To tens of thousands of pop fans, Wilson's completion of "Smile" is no less exhilarating than the discovery of a completed manuscript for Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony would be to classical music scholars. "I can hardly wait," says Rick Rubin, a producer who has worked with acts ranging from Johnny Cash and Tom Petty to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Beastie Boys.

Wilson, his hair now streaked with gray but still thick and full, has been touring regularly since 1998, something many pop fans never thought they'd see, given his history of emotional instability. Now they'll get the music that most never dreamed they would hear.

The Beatles' Rivals

Wilson was 24 when he went to work on the album he conceived as "a teenage symphony to God." Originally to be called "Dumb Angel" to reflect its themes of humor and spirituality, it was retitled "Smile." It was 1966, and a string of more than two dozen hit singles and 10 hit albums had made the Beach Boys, a band from Hawthorne, the most popular American group and the Beatles' chief rivals atop the sales charts. Pop music was going through a transformation in which the album was supplanting the three-minute single as the dominant format.

Wilson has long said he felt a sense of artistic competitiveness with the Fab Four. Each group has acknowledged the influence of the other. The Beatles' 1965 album "Rubber Soul" inspired Wilson to move beyond the teen simplicity of the Beach Boys' early work to the musical maturity and emotional expressiveness of 1966's "Pet Sounds." The ambitions of "Pet Sounds" helped spur the Beatles to new heights in their next album, "Revolver." Wilson was determined to top his rivals again with "Smile." He promised it would be as much of a progression over "Pet Sounds" as that was over its predecessor, "Beach Boys Party!"

"Smile" was expected at the end of 1966 — while the Beatles were working on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Immediately after "Pet Sounds," Wilson created the band's most intricately crafted recording, "Good Vibrations," a song intended for "Smile." It became the Beach Boys' biggest hit up to that time, proof that there was a market for Wilson's increasingly sophisticated music. Wilson's further evolution with "Smile" stemmed from his collaboration with Van Dyke Parks, a Mississippi-born singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger and producer who had moved to Southern California in the 1950s.

Parks brought a strong literary sensibility to the lyrics he wrote for "Smile," which he and Wilson envisioned as a work rooted in American history, culture and musical vernacular. It was to contain doses of comic-book humor reflecting the whimsicality of the dawning psychedelic age. (Jimi Hendrix once described what he'd heard of "Smile" as the music of "a psychedelic barbershop quartet.") But Parks' impressionistic lyrics led to dissension among the Beach Boys. Mike Love, the band's front man during concerts, was particularly sensitive to pleasing fans and found Parks' lyrics obscure. Other band members worried that "Smile's" musical sophistication wouldn't translate into radio hits. By then, Wilson had left behind the simple three-chord pop song in favor of careening melodies, unconventional chord progressions and shifting sonic textures.

Complicating the picture, the group was attempting to start its own label, Brother Records. As part of that move, the band sued Capitol Records. Capitol printed nearly half a million "Smile" album covers, anticipating the arrival of a master tape in fall 1966. But Wilson, working in the studio while the other Beach Boys were on tour, missed deadline after deadline as he continued polishing his work.

Lack of support from his band mates was a factor in the delay. But he also was feeling stress from the lawsuit and the weight of his responsibility for ensuring the livelihood of the ever-expanding Beach Boys family — on top of an ongoing struggle with his domineering, abusive and jealous father, Murry. The final blow came in June 1967 with the release of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Wilson had been bested by his rivals, and he scrapped "Smile." The band later came out with a watered-down version called "Smiley Smile," a faint echo of Wilson's original vision.

Myth Versus Fact

The fate of "Smile" has become legend. Although most of the world never heard the album, several influential musicians and journalists were allowed into some of the recording sessions in late 1966 and early 1967. The idea that rock music might be considered art rather than merely entertainment was in its infancy. Yet no less an authority than Leonard Bernstein expressed admiration for the sophistication of "Surf's Up," one of "Smile's" cornerstone tracks, played for him as part of a CBS News documentary about a new generation of musicians. Unlike the guessing game often played with legendary rockers who died prematurely — what music might Hendrix, Buddy Holly or Jim Morrison have made had they lived longer? — the fantasizing over "Smile" is based on more than wishful thinking.

Most of the album's songs had been recorded by the time Wilson abandoned the project. For years they lay dormant; reel upon reel of tape waiting to be stitched together and brought to life by their creator. Eventually, tantalizing bits and pieces surfaced, officially and unofficially.

Books and countless articles have been written about Wilson's masterwork, and the theorizing has raged on via the Internet. One enterprising group in Europe came up with "Project Smile," a CD-ROM containing all the existing bits and pieces of the work, circulated for free among users worldwide. That do-it-yourself approach had been the closest possibility to a completed version, because Wilson long refused to even discuss it.

"Until about three years ago, you couldn't even mention 'Heroes and Villains' to Brian," Wilson biographer David Leaf said, referring to another key song from "Smile." Leaf is making a film documentary about the completion of the album. But Wilson's attitude changed after the enthusiastic fan response to his performance of "Heroes and Villains" at a 2001 all-star tribute to his music in New York. He has not simply dusted off songs intended for "Smile." He has reunited with lyricist Parks to structure the disparate pieces into a fully developed three-movement pop suite and craft a few new lyrics and musical links.

Out of the Darkness

Wilson says he was able to revisit perhaps the darkest chapter of his past because "I have emotional security." He gets it from his wife of nine years, Melinda, the three children they've adopted, a team of doctors from UCLA that has diagnosed and helped him manage his depression, and a sympathetic group of musicians whose goal is to aid Wilson in realizing his musical vision. After failing to deliver "Smile," the Beach Boys continued to produce acclaimed albums, but ceased to be a commercial force in pop music.

Wilson retreated from the world, and his musical output slowed to a trickle. Melinda Wilson believes that he was in the grip of a depression that went undiagnosed and untreated. "Like many people with depression who don't get proper treatment, he tried to medicate himself with drugs," she says. His first wife, Marilyn, brought in Hollywood psychologist Eugene Landy to help Wilson in the 1970s. Landy lived 24 hours a day with Wilson, recommended medication (provided by one of Landy's associates who was an M.D.) and interceded in the Beach Boys artistic and business decisions.

The band members and Wilson's relatives grew alarmed when Wilson rewrote his will to make Landy the main beneficiary. They filed suit against Landy, contending that the psychologist had taken over Wilson's life. In 1991, a judge put the songwriter's affairs under the control of a court-appointed conservator. Melinda describes her husband's path back to "Smile" as consisting of many "baby steps." It started with his resumption of concert appearances in 1998, followed by a more ambitious tour in 2000 in which he and his new band performed "Pet Sounds" in its entirety.

Now, he says, at least privately to Melinda, the album he had formerly written off as "a mistake" is "the best work I've ever done." It's not intended as a reconstruction of the album the world should have heard 37 years ago. "It's the way I feel about the music now," Wilson says. And how does he feel about it now? "I think it's perfect."

Wilson talks about his music haltingly, at times giving clipped responses of "yes," "no" or "I can't answer that question"; at others offering simplistic-sounding explanations. (Asked how he and Parks composed "Wonderful," a "Smile" song that dazzles musicologists because it abandons the conventional notion of key signature, he says, "We did it through concentration.") Such comments reflect his inherent shyness, Melinda says. But the impression that develops over the course of two interviews is that what he feels about his music is the music and that verbal explanations are, for Wilson, redundant. Wilson doesn't appear concerned, nor does anyone in his entourage, that after 3 1/2 decades of analysis and debate, rumor and speculation, the myth will overshadow the music.

"It's so far beyond what I would have imagined it could be," guitarist Jeffrey Foskett says after a complete run-through of "Smile" at rehearsal. "The way I see it is that the Beach Boys' first 10 albums made them stars, 'Pet Sounds' made them great, and 'Smile' made Brian Wilson a legend. I just hope that in completing this, it gives him peace and lets him put this behind him after all these years." In one of "Pet Sounds' " directly autobiographical songs, Wilson sang, "I guess I just wasn't made for these times."

Now, he says, "I think the time is right."

February

All SMiLES in London

BEACH BOYS star BRIAN WILSON has played the 'lost' album 'SMILE' for the first time ever in LONDON.

The singer played the first night of a residency at the London Royal Festival Hall this evening (February 20), the first dates on a tour which will visit other cities throughout the UK this month.

The gig itself was split into two sections. The first opened with a fifteen minute acoustic set, followed by a 'Greatest Hits' show. During this, Wilson, backed by an 18-piece band, performed a number of songs from 'Pet Sounds', including 'God Only Knows' and 'Wouldn't It Be Nice'.

After a short interval Wilson then returned to the stage where 'Smile' was played for the first time in full.

The concept album was originally intended for release in 1967, around the same time The Beatles put out 'Sgt Pepper'. However, Wilson had a breakdown and the album was never finished, giving it almost mythical status amongst fans.

Throughout the performance Wilson appeared in good form, leading the band through songs like 'Heroes And Villains' and 'Vegetables', that saw each member of the group playing multiple instruments in the same song, while making use of more unconventional items such as hammers and saws. The set ended with a storming run-through 'Good Vibrations'