FEATURE:
Second Spin
Brian Wilson - Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE
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THERE are reasons why…
I am suggesting people listen to Brian Wilson’s Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. It is an album that is very well-regarded and is magnificent, yet I don’t see too many tracks featured on the radio. It is not as exposed and shared as music from The Beach Boys. That is a shame! It was released on 28th September, 2004. Recently, the family of Brian Wilson asked a court in Los Angeles to place him under a conservatorship. The legendary musicians is living with a ‘neurocognitive disorder’, similar to dementia. Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE turns twenty in September. I am going to get to some reviews. Featuring all-new music, this was Brian Wilson reviving an unfinished album by The Beach Boys that he abandoned in 1967. By all accounts, revisiting this album – also referred to as SMiLE - was a hugely emotional undertaking for Wilson. He had been traumatised by the circumstances that had originally surrounded the project. Brian Wilson and his band premiered Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 20th February, 2004. Buoyed by an enormously positive reception, Wilson adapted the performance of Brian Wilson Presents Smile as a solo album. None of the other Beach Boys were involved with the album. There is not as much written about this majestic album as there should be. In terms of its making and legacy. How it is such an important album. I will start out with Pitchfork’s review. They discuss the background and circumstances behind Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. How originally it took so much out of Wilson. When it was finally released in 2004, it was met with unanimous praise and positivity:
“Brian Wilson was the son of a songwriter. He was a naturally creative boy, though also prone to the same sunny interests and obsessions as his friends and cousins. He came of age just as thousands of other kids did at the time, learning that this place really could be the land of the free, home of love, peace, self-discovery and where everyone he cared about lived. He loved music. He still does, though at 61, despite the full mane of hair, he doesn't quite sound or write like the same boy who once scored the perfect soundtrack for an American summer. He was obsessed with George Gershwin and vanilla white harmony groups like The Four Freshman; he gave the world "In My Room" and Pet Sounds in return. Brian Wilson is touring Smile right now, with, they say, an unplugged keyboard and the same stiff onstage demeanor he showed during the "Brian is back" days. But then, performance has never been his bag.
Wilson abandoned Smile, his painstakingly planned follow-up to Pet Sounds, in 1967 because he had a nervous breakdown. He was emotionally unfit to continue. He was 24, only a few years older than I was when I bought my first bootleg copy of the music. If you want to know the precise details about how he broke down, there are dozens of accounts available (including mine here at Pitchfork). The short end of it has to do with drugs, growing pains, a new cast of friends, and a dysfunctional family. Brian had too much of all those things in the mid-60s; working on what was supposed to be the greatest record ever made might not have been the most realistic endeavor. Or maybe it would have been, had he surrounded himself with more understanding people. Or fewer drugs. Or better drugs. Or been able to keep his overbearing dad out of the picture. And on and on and on, until being a fan of the guy is more exhausting than it is rewarding. I really don't blame him for staying in bed for the 70s.
I first heard Smile when I compiled my own version of it. The Beach Boys' Good Vibrations box had just come out, containing the first "officially" sanctioned missing pieces of the album. I, like many amateur Beach Boys historians, used them, along with the best songs from the boots to make ad-hoc masterpieces. I'd read how "Our Prayer" was supposed to go first, and it seemed naturally to segue right into "Heroes & Villains". Then I had to decide which versions to use. I strung together the single mix with the "Cantina" version with "Do You Like Worms" (its cousin), using a complex system of cassette deck editing techniques-- that is, I got really good at using the "pause" button. I put Wilson's solo vocal and piano performance of "Surf's Up" last. It ended my tape on a bittersweet note, which I guessed was in the spirit of what Smile would have been. I was wrong. Sigh. A lot of us were.
Darian Sahanaja was right. Wilson's wife Melinda suggested that Brian take Smile on the road, and Sahanaja, keyboardist and backing vocalist in Wilson's touring band (aka The Wondermints) took up the sizable task of organizing the project. He dumped every Smile song and song-fragment he could find onto his laptop, took them to Wilson's house and watched as Wilson proceeded to phone no less an authority than original lyricist Van Dyke Parks when he needed help remembering lyrics. They hadn't really kept in touch for a few years, but Parks was at Wilson's place within 24 hours-- and would stay for five days-- to settle past scores and finish the lost record.
The trio made subtle changes to the music when necessary, and in the spring, Wilson headed to Studio One at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles to make his record. Just as he'd made the original "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes & Villains" there, Wilson gathered his band, strings and brass to record the tracks, cutting the basic arrangements live while doing the vocals on the same tube consoles his old Beach Boys had.
The end result is a great album, albeit one more lighthearted than its myth would suggest. The music I hear is like round pegs in square holes; it's just as insular and manic-compassionate as "In My Room" or "God Only Knows", but filtered through an amiable resolve. It sounds pleasant and assured, lacking the vulnerable, shy wave of hope drenching the old Beach Boys records. Yet, Wilson's voice sounds great. It's a bit lower, and his inflections have lost some subtlety over the years, but it still carries the weight of those angelic melodies (and when it can't, his band helps him out).
And what of his band? The eight musicians who contributed to recording Smile with Wilson not only live up to the material, but also make possible what could not have been all those years ago. They are not the Beach Boys. There is no Carl Wilson. For better or worse, there is no Mike Love. But there is the music, and all concerned parties should be given some kind of musical amnesty award for managing to avoid the pitfalls of posthumous reworking and re-recording. This is no ghost record or bout of nostalgia. Rather than study the lonely, bittersweet passions of Wilson's youth, it celebrates the return of his muse and his gift to the world in the form of a "teenage symphony to God”.
In a recent feature, Rolling Stone spoke with multi-instrumentalist Probyn Gregory about working with a genius on Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. They asked what it was like touring with Wilson and helping him finish this classic album. It is a fascinating piece I would advise people to check out in full:
“How did you learn about the lost Smile record?
I heard rumors of it in college, but when I first came to L.A., someone loaned me a cassette with a few fragments on there. I thought, “Wow, this is crazy stuff.” I began seeking it out at what they call “swap meets,” these places where you could buy bootleg records. I don’t know how this stuff leaked out of the vaults, but various parts of Smile would come my way, or come other people’s way.
When I met Darian, he had fragments that I didn’t have, and I had fragments that he didn’t have. We would meet at each other’s houses, along with Nick Walusko, or this person, Domenic Priore, who was a Smile scholar. He may not have been a musician, but he was a real fan of all that Smile stuff.
What captivated you so much about this music?
The vibe. One of the things about the Beach Boys has always been their ethereal vocal blends. Even after I joined the Brian Wilson Band, we would try to sound like that, but we couldn’t because we weren’t the brothers. We didn’t have the history that they did of sitting around the Wilson family piano, with Al Jardine and Mike Love. They had a sound like no one else did. There was something that came across in the yearning and the mournful feeling that imbues a lot of Brian Wilson’s music.
hat came through in spades, to me, in the Smile fragments. I got a real sense of, not incompletion, but world weariness, and an understanding. Pet Sounds was all about that too, the teenager trying to become a man.
There was this sort of illicit thrill of listening to Smile bootlegs back then. It was this forbidden music you knew drove Brian insane trying to finish, and no longer wanted anything to do with.
I know what you mean. Every time I heard a new fragment that I fell in love with, I would thank God for my little inner circle of people that allowed me to hear this music that otherwise wouldn’t be heard. I really wished that other people would hear it. At some point, there was a paper in Los Angeles called The Reader. I took out an ad in the back, and I said something along the order of, “Capitol Records, please release Smile. This music needs to be heard.”
Was your mind blown when you got the job?
Oh my God. Todd Rundgren, Neil Young, and Brian Wilson, especially Brian Wilson and Todd, those are my heroes. To be able to play with one of my heroes, it just blew my head off.
Tell me about preparing for that tour. You guys approached the material very differently than the Beach Boys touring band of that time.
Yes. But I didn’t even really know what the touring band was up to. My friends told me in the Seventies and the Eighties that the touring band didn’t float their boat. They said, “Just listen to the records. Don’t bother going to the show. You’ll be disappointed,” which was stupid, and I’m sorry I ever listened to them, because I could have seen Dennis play. I never saw Dennis play before he passed away. And similarly with Carl. But the time I got around to seeing the Beach Boys, it was 2000. I felt cheated that I didn’t get to see those earlier versions of the band”.
I will end with a couple of reviews. The Guardian were among those who shared their opinions about Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. It is a masterpiece that I would urge everyone to seek out and listen to. Up there with any album by The Beach Boys in terms of its beauty, quality and musicianship. Such a wonderful album from one of the greatest songwriters ever:
“There has been much hand-wringing about the detrimental effect of hype on rock and pop music. But no manufactured pop single or media-darling indie album can hope to match the hype preceding Smile, which has been going on not for weeks or months, but for 37 years. It was the Beach Boys album that was supposed to revolutionise pop music, to dwarf even its predecessor, Pet Sounds. Instead, composer and producer Brian Wilson suffered a drug-induced breakdown in 1967, declined to finish the album and took to his bed.
Smile became mythic, a status fuelled by the outrageously inventive tracks that trickled out on later Beach Boys albums and bootlegs. They suggested that, during the Smile sessions, Wilson and lyricist Van Dyke Parks had variously been writing elegiac ballads of startling beauty (Surf's Up, Wonderful, Wind Chimes), attempting to condense the entire history of America into a series of LSD-skewed musical fragments (Heroes and Villains, Do You Like Worms?, Cabinessence) and, perhaps less ambitiously, making animal noises and banging bits of wood together (Barnyard, Workshop).
The news that Wilson and his backing band (based around American 1960s revivalists the Wondermints) were going to completely re-record and release Smile, after touring a completed version of it, was enough to cause an outbreak of mild hysteria. One Sunday supplement urgently sought the government's opinion. Even they may have been surprised to get an answer not from the arts minister, but from defence secretary Geoff Hoon. Luckily, the past 18 months have been exceptionally quiet for the British armed forces, giving Hoon plenty of time to ponder the influence of the Beach Boys' mid-1960s work on current alt-rock. He certainly seems well informed - "It's such a good time for its re-release," he told the Observer; "the indie bands my son listens to are building on Wilson's ideas" - which will doubtless come as some comfort to the 8,900 British troops stationed in Iraq.
Despite the hype, it is hard not to be impressed with the new Smile. Ever since his 1967 breakdown, Wilson has looked pretty bewildered by life. Even today, ostensibly healthy, he gives off the air of a man not entirely sure which way round his trousers go, let alone how the myriad parts of Smile were ever supposed to fit together. And yet, fit together they now do. The album's "concept" may be as baffling as ever (even Parks seems at a loss to explain precisely what the richly evocative imagery of his lyrics is evoking), but the music flows beautifully - no mean feat when it encompasses barbershop singing, acid rock, early pop, Hawaiian chanting and mock-religious plainsong.
You suspect this may have more to do with Wilson's "musical secretary", Wondermints keyboard player Darian Sahanaja, than anybody is letting on. The painstaking re-creation of Heroes and Villains' complex harmonies or the orchestral arrangement of Mrs O'Leary's Cow sound less like the work of a songwriting genius than that of a particularly dogged fan given free rein in the studio. The feeling that some of the re-recordings are otiose - given that you can't improve on perfection, it's hard to see the point of a new version of Good Vibrations - is undermined by the fact that if Wilson had simply wanted to complete the original 1960s recordings, he would presumably have had to negotiate with Mike Love, the vocalist who now owns the Beach Boys' name. Negotiating with Mike Love is a state of affairs you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy, let alone a fragile 62-year-old.
Sahanaja also deserves credit for reining in his band's excesses. On their own albums, the Wondermints tend towards a wearisome brand of wackiness, which must have been hard to keep in check, given the nature of Smile's music. Only once does the temptation become too much to resist: the joyous Holiday now comes with a monologue about pirates going yo-ho-me-hearties that could make even the soundest of minds consider following Wilson's lead and pulling a duvet over their head for a few years.
For his part, Wilson seems reinvigorated by Smile's resurrection. His last album, Gettin' in Over My Head, was marred by his disconcerting vocal technique: he sang everything in a halting, distressed bark, as if he were reading a ransom note rather than his own lyrics. Here, he may not always reach the high notes, but he oozes a relaxed confidence, and with good reason. Confronted with Cabinessence's breathtaking chorus, the unfathomably lovely melody of Wonderful or the sudden explosion of lavish vocal harmonies that brings Wind Chimes to a close, you're forced to conclude that four decades on, the songs Wilson wrote for Smile still sound like nothing else rock music has ever produced. Its release may not warrant a quote from the defence secretary, but only the hardest heart would not be gladdened by its contents”.
I shall end with a review from AllMusic. Reaching the top twenty in the U.K. and U.S., I would urge everyone to listen to Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. It is a true masterpiece! I don’t think that you have to be a big fan of The Beach Boys to appreciate the album and its sound:
“The white whale of '60s record-making, the Beach Boys' aborted SMiLE album gradually gained a legend that not only inflated its rumored importance and complexity, but gave credence to an odd notion -- that completing it, then or ever, was impossible. In truth, SMiLE should have been released and forgotten, reissued and reappraised, and finally remastered for the digital era and ushered into the rock canon ever since Brian Wilson halted work on it in May 1967 (after an exhausting 85 recording sessions). Instead, it languished in the vaults and remained the perfect record -- perfect, of course, because it had never been finished. Reports that the recording of "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" had caused a nearby building to burn down and whispers of "inappropriate music" gave it the character of a monster, one that cursed all those who approached it and claimed the heart and mind of its major participant. Wilson's love of "feels" -- short passages of cyclical music that could be overdubbed and rearranged countless times -- had made 1966's "Good Vibrations" the ultimate pocket symphony, but had also quickly spiralled into the instability that consumed him during its follow-up, "Heroes and Villains," projected to be the centerpiece of SMiLE.
Happily, a new recording of SMiLE by Brian Wilson reveals the record as nothing more (or less) than a jaunty epic of psychedelic Americana, a rambling and discursive, playful and affectionate series of song cycles. Infectious and hummable, to be sure, and a remarkably unified, irresistible piece of pop music, but no musical watershed on par with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or Wilson's masterpiece, Pet Sounds. For the first time ever, the program for SMiLE was compiled, after Brian Wilson first listened to the original recordings with his musical midwife, Darian Sahanaja of the Wondermints (which has long functioned as Wilson's live backing band), and then worked them into a live show and album recording. The work that evolved divides into three sections: SMiLE begins with Americana, which takes the dream of continental expansion from the old Spanish town saga of "Heroes and Villains" to the landing at Plymouth Rock and, finally, the end of the frontier at Hawaii; it continues with a Cycle of Life that progresses from the virginal grace of "Wonderful" to the simultaneous peak and decline of the creative life on "Surf's Up"; and ends with an environmental cycle called The Elements, which includes "Vega-Tables," (Earth), "Wind Chimes" (Air), "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" (Fire), and "In Blue Hawaii" (Water).
Since Wilson himself was previously the most opposed to SMiLE appearing in any form, it's a considerable shock that this new recording justifies even half of the promise that fans had attached to it. Everything that Wilson and his band could control sounds nearly perfect. Every instrument, every note, and every intonation is nearly identical to the late-'60s tapes; one has to wonder whether vintage hand tools weren't acquired for "Workshop" and Paul McCartney wasn't flown in to add chewing noises to "Vega-Tables." (The players did, however, book time at one of Brian's old haunts, Sunset Sound, and utilized a '60s tube console to record their vocals.) No, the harmonies here aren't the Beach Boys' harmonies, and Brian's vocals aren't the vocals he was capable of 37 years ago, but they're excellent and (best of all) never distracting. Aside from the technical acumen on display, Wilson has also, amazingly, found a home -- the proper home -- for all of the brilliant instrumental snippets that lent the greatest part of the mystery to the unreleased SMiLE. Van Dyke Parks' new (or newly heard) lyrics fit into these compositions, and the work as a whole, like hand in glove. (The former instrumentals include "Barnyard"; "Holiday," which is here called "On a Holiday"; "Look," which is now "Song for Children"; and "I Love to Say Da-Da," which is now part of "In Blue Hawaii.") Most surprisingly, nearly all of this thematic unity was accomplished by merely reworking the original material already on tape, which proves that Wilson was never very far from finishing SMiLE in 1967. (It's very likely that the gulf was psychological; SMiLE had few supporters among Brian's closest friends and family.) Hopefully, Capitol is readying a SMiLE Sessions box set to release all of the vintage material, but it's clear that nothing they dig up from the vaults will be able to match the unity of this attractive recording. It's up to the standards of anyone who's ever scoured the bootlegs to create a SMiLE tape, and further, it beats them all, which is the highest compliment. So, if you've never been burdened with a friend's SMiLE tape before, count yourself lucky that Brian Wilson's is the first you'll hear. And if you have heard a few, prepare to listen to them much less religiously”.
Go and listen to the magnificent and unforgettable Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE. Many of us are thinking about Brian Wilson because of his health issues. Whether he will ever record music again or perform live. As it turns twenty later in the year, I wanted to spend time with an album that is not as played and known about as it should be. Pick up a copy and listen to this phenomenal album. It is one of the greatest works ever from…
A true music master.