The Beat Patrol

Written in two parts for Stylus magazine, July 28 and Aug. 4, 2003 (prior to Brian Wilson doing his own version with his current band), comes this long, in-depth discussion on the greatest album that never was… 

It is the ultimate irony that one of the most famous (and infamous) Beach Boys album has never even been officially released. Critics have endlessly discussed the impact of the group’s undisputed masterpiece, 1966’s Pet Sounds, and nostalgic fans have long been enamored of the band’s early surfing-cars-and-girls singles, but arguably even more attention has been dedicated to the group’s Smile era. Despite the impressive accomplishments of the Beach Boys during their early-to-mid ’60s peak, they will forever be remembered for the one accomplishment they failed to deliver.

The story of Smile has been well-documented, starting even before the sessions for the album fell apart. Although the relatively adventurous Pet Sounds had been a commercial disappointment compared to the Boys’ past work, it was also critically lauded and almost universally embraced within the rest of the musical community. The album’s emotional beauty reportedly brought Paul McCartney to tears, in a time when the Beatles and the Beach Boys were both competitors and a mutual inspiration for one another. It was a remarkable record that deliberately set off to infuse pop music with a naked emotional content that had not often been present previously. The true miracle of this phase of the band’s evolution is that Brian Wilson, who had masterminded Pet Sounds and most of the Boys’ other peak-era material, really knew that he was onto something special here. He was purposefully branching out into previously unexplored avenues, not just on a personal level, but for pop music in general.

Though Brian had been the de facto leader of the Beach Boys ever since their earliest days, in the mid-60s he truly came into his own as the primary — even sole — source of the band’s artistic vision. When he quit touring in 1964 to concentrate full-time on the studio (an idea the Beatles would embrace en masse a few years later), the Beach Boys’ records began to head into distinctly new creative terrain. 1965’s The Beach Boys Today! heralded this new direction with more audacious productions, serious, introspective (though still very teenage) lyrics, and the use of session musicians to play most of the instrumental parts. Brian followed up Today! with Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!), which was just as impressive in its epic pop scope. The glorious singles “Help Me Rhonda” and “California Girls,” coupled with equally stunning lesser-known cuts like “Let Him Run Wild,” “Kiss Me, Baby,” and “Girl Don’t Tell Me,” were indicative of Brian’s increasing confidence and ambition in the studio.

These two records were a drastic departure for the band, paving the way for the near-perfection of this more sophisticated sound on Pet Sounds. Most impressively, at least prior to Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys’ comparatively more experimental outings still sold lots of records, despite the restless tinkering with their already successful formula. With the weight of these expectations behind him, Brian set out to make what many — Brian included — claimed would have been the best album ever made.

But first, immediately after completing work on Pet Sounds, Brian returned to the studio to craft a song called “Good Vibrations,” which he had started during the early ’66 album sessions but postponed until he could dedicate his full attention to it. The single, called a “pocket symphony” by Brian, represented a completely unprecedented form of production, a massive leap forward in recording methods. As impressive as Brian’s multilayered production on Pet Sounds and its predecessors had been, “Good Vibrations” was an even greater leap forward in the Beach Boys’ evolution; it would also prove to be their last truly significant, commercially available work.

Using the studio as an instrument, Brian recorded multiple instrumental and vocal sections for the song, taking six months to record, re-record, and arrange the different segments into a coherent whole. He experimented with many different arrangements, finally crafting the definitive mix which has become one of the most famous and well-loved rock singles of all time. Although the other Beach Boys reportedly complained about Brian’s relentless attention to even the tiniest details, the result spoke for itself, and his efforts were validated in October of 1966 with the group’s first #1 selling single.

Fresh off this success and the critical acclaim for Pet Sounds, Brian was reportedly bursting with creativity and enthusiasm. He was anxious to complete a work that could compete successfully, both on a commercial and artistic level, with the contemporary accomplishments of the Beatles. The Beatles’ Rubber Soul, with its thematically consistent, high-quality suite of songs, had inspired Brian to create Pet Sounds, and the continuing friendly competition between the two groups further spurred Brian’s genius.

Smile was born from several projects Brian was considering at the time: an album of comedy, a fitness album, a record featuring only water sounds. In the fall of 1966, before “Good Vibrations” was released, Brian combined these ideas and began work on what would have been the Beach Boys’ next album, the successor to Pet Sounds. The album, at first dubbed Dumb Angel — to indicate the conflict between spirituality and earthliness that would have been one of the record’s central themes — represented a hotbed of Brian’s diverse ideas from this period. He wanted to make a record that would build on the innovations of the past year, continuing the group’s evolution from innocent surfers to an artistic outlet for Brian’s increasingly sophisticated ambitions. He also wanted to make an LP that would live up to its title, a happy record that would spread the “good vibrations” he so badly desired to foster in his fans.

The advance billing on Smile was incredibly positive. It was one of the most talked-about albums in the rock press in late 1966 and early 1967, and reports from journalists who visited Brian in the studio largely confirmed the expectations that this would be one of the most amazing recordings ever. Capitol, the Boys’ label, initially scheduled the album for a December ’66 release, a date that was continually pushed back as Brian dedicated more and more work to perfecting the album. Even as the sessions stretched out far beyond what had been anticipated, early in December Brian wrote up a tentative tracklist featuring the 12 songs that the album would feature when completed. Using this, the label commissioned the artist Frank Holmes to design a booklet for Smile, listing the songs Brian named on the back of the sleeve with a notation to look at the record itself for the proper order. The 12 tracks on Brian’s memo were:

Do You Like Worms?
Wind Chimes
Heroes & Villains
Surf’s Up
Good Vibrations
Cabinessence
Wonderful
I’m in Great Shape
Child is the Father of the Man
The Elements
Vega-Tables
The Old Master Painter/Sunshine

Capitol printed up 400,000 copies of the album jackets along with Holmes’ 12-page booklets, still optimistically anticipating a release in the not-so-distant future, while Brian continued feverishly spinning off ideas for the record. The sessions halted several times — including once because of a royalties dispute with Capitol — and infighting between the other Beach Boys and Brian further stalled the recording. It’s clear that Brian’s arty ambitions for the album simply seemed weird and uncommercial to the rest of the group, and their clashes intensified as the sessions progressed. A particular bone of contention with the group was Brian’s new lyrical collaborator, Van Dyke Parks, whose abstract, poetic, and often nonsensical lyrics infuriated the other Beach Boys (especially the Wilsons’ cousin, Mike Love). Brian’s growing drug habit, which at least partially inspired the album’s heavy psychedelic content, was another problem, and his sometimes weird behavior in the studio raised concerns about the viability of the entire project.

By the early months of 1967, it was obvious that Smile was disintegrating. In February, Brian concentrated solely on the planned first single “Heroes & Villains,” only to abandon that and focus his efforts on “Vega-Tables,” which he also scrapped after two feverish weeks of work. Brian’s behavior was growing increasingly erratic and idiosyncratic, and he was frustrated by his inability to convey his ideas to the rest of his group. The sessions grew more fractured than ever, old ideas were abandoned and new ones commenced, and Van Dyke Parks left the project in the wake of criticism from Mike Love and the other Beach Boys.

By May of that year, the Smile album had been abandoned altogether, with countless hours of tapes thrown into the vaults. In its place, the group hastily assembled an album called Smiley Smile and released it in September of 1967 to an underwhelming reaction. The LP was a slipshod collection of salvaged Smile bits and pieces, featuring some material recorded during the ’66-’67 sessions, as well as some newly recorded parts. The record, in stark contrast to the crisp studio perfection of Brian’s previous work, was roughly produced and assembled in virtually no time at all.

The reaction to Smiley Smile was unenthusiastic, especially considering all the pre-release hype that had been given to this material for the previous ten months. In the wake of all that build-up for the greatest album ever made, Smiley Smile’s loony, half-finished psychedelia couldn’t really be anything but an incredible disappointment. The LP wasn’t helped by the fact that the re-recordings were distinctly inferior to the Smile-era versions of the same songs. Although virtually no one at that time had heard the gorgeous Smile realizations of “Heroes & Villains,” “Wonderful,” “With Me Tonight,” “Vega-Tables,” or “Wind Chimes,” there was still a palpable sense that the takes available simply didn’t live up to the group’s promise.

Now, with the actual Smile material accessible on numerous bootlegs, Smiley Smile only seems even more flawed, though it retains a certain charm in its off-the-cuff rawness and childlike whimsy. Still, the defining feeling running through the album — and indeed all of the Beach Boys’ subsequent recordings — is one of disappointment. Following the Smile debacle, the Beach Boys would never again approach the heights they’d once so confidently scaled. The late ’60s and early ’70s saw the group releasing a handful of uneven but enjoyable albums, many of which recycled Smile material as a draw to longtime fans. Even so, these albums were largely unsuccessful with both the public and the critical community, and re-packagings of their surf-and-sun greatest hits consistently sold much better than their new studio albums. Over time, the Beach Boys mutated into an oldies act, selling out large-scale tours on the strength of their nostalgic hits.

Brian Wilson’s role in the group has diminished along with his band’s success. Smiley Smile was the first Beach Boys album to bear the notation “produced by the Beach Boys” rather than the proud “produced by Brian Wilson” which had adorned the group’s peak-era records. Never again would Brian assert a dominant role in the group; on 1973’s Holland, he fully relinquished the production to his brother Carl, and subsequent albums have often hardly featured Brian at all. The wake of the Smile disaster left Brian’s confidence completely shattered. His self-perceived failure to compete with the Beatles destroyed all of his artistic drive, and though he’s released a few solo albums over the years, he has never truly come close to matching his former glories. The combination of his late-’60s drug use with his fragile ego has caused him to withdraw almost totally from public life.

All of this is the readily available mythology of Smile. The album has been one of the most discussed and dissected unreleased records ever made, and the availability of bootleg recordings documenting the sessions has only further fueled the dialogue. Multiple theories abound concerning what Smile might actually have been if it had been completed, and many mysteries are contained even within Brian’s semi-official tracklist, not to mention the scores of unfinished takes, brief instrumentals, and experiments that were attempted during the sessions.

Some who have written about the album — most notably Domenic Priore, whose book “Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile!” is considered the definitive tome on the subject — have contended that Smile was virtually finished when Brian abandoned it, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Certainly, significant work was completed on almost all the songs Brian listed, but likewise almost none of them were finished. Preliminary mixes had been made (in some cases several times) for “Heroes & Villains,” “Wonderful,” “Cabinessence,” “Prayer,” and “Wind Chimes,” but “Surf’s Up,” “Do You Like Worms?,” and “Child is the Father of the Man” were missing crucial vocal parts, and the remaining songs (including “I’m in Great Shape” and “The Elements”) had only been worked on minimally.

More likely than Priore’s convoluted theory regarding Smile — which went so far as to posit a song order based largely on speculation — is that Smile was, simply put, nowhere near finished in May of 1967. Furthermore, any effort to guess at what the album might have sounded like would be nothing more than conjecture. When Smile was abandoned, the material that existed was spread out over months and months, comprising half-finished songs, fragments, experimental sessions, reams of vocal overdubs, alternate versions, and rough mixes. It’s virtually impossible to take this disparate, haphazardly compiled material and form an image of what Brian intended Smile to be at the time; to do so would require actually getting into Brian’s thoughts from the period, and even then it’s likely that he himself didn’t have a clear, constant, single idea for the album.

What exists from the Smile period, then, is the equivalent of dozens of separate albums that might have been. There is no sense in attempting to reduce these recordings to the traditional pop album it would’ve been if it had come out in 1967. Instead, the Beach Boys’ unfinished album is best heard as a movie reel on the making of a record: multiple takes of each song, with no definitive version. These recordings are among the most intriguing, constantly fascinating music ever made; in a way, a more informative and enjoyable listen than any non-existent Smile single album could have been.

This is the spirit with which I will approach the rest of this article, peering into the inner workings of each song from the Smile era, and hopefully shedding some greater light on the project as a whole along the way. The 12 songs from the Capitol tracklist will serve as signposts, guides to reveal a fuller picture of this nearly unfathomable work of art. As a portrait of the creative process at work, the Smile sessions are unrivaled in popular music, a voyeuristic thrill for the rock connoisseur, a diagram of the recording process laid bare.

A NOTE ON BOOTLEGS

Naturally, given the nature of Smile, numerous unofficial bootlegs of varying quality exist. The documentation of the sessions has been spread out over thirty years, and no definitive bootleg sums up the entire project. The popular (and now defunct) bootleg label Vigotone has produced a two-disc version that is considered one of the best for its balance between near-finished songs and session fragments, although it is marred by errors and incompleteness (for instance, it contains no completed mix of “Heroes & Villains”). Numerous other single disc approximations of the album have often been released, mostly consisting of the widely accepted “finished” songs. The best of these may be on the Sea of Tunes label, which has released a wealth of Beach Boys rarities. Their Unsurpassed Masters series dedicates volumes 16 and 17 to Smile, with the 16th installment featuring an 18-song line-up of rough full mixes, and volume 17 compiling three discs of studio sessions and song segments.

Another good source for the raw sessions is the Japanese vinyl bootleg Archaeology, which dedicates three of its five LPs to The Lost Smile Sessions, totaling to nearly two hours of studio sessions representing around fifteen different tunes from the album. Numerous other bootlegs have been made available over the years, but all of them essentially contain the same core material of (mostly) completed songs and session tapes, and relatively little new material has surfaced over the years.

There is also a sizable amount of Smile material available on official releases from Capitol Records. The Beach Boys consistently salvaged old material from the album for their new recordings throughout the ’60s and ’70s. The albums Smiley Smile (1967), Wild Honey (1967), 20/20 (1969), Sunflower (1970), and Surf’s Up (1971) all contained reworked and newly finished versions of Smile songs, some of them remaining true to the original conceptions, and some departing significantly from the originals. Additionally, Capitol’s reissues of these albums as twofers with two albums on one CD have also included a number of bonus tracks, many of which date from the late 1966-early 1967 era.

Capitol has also included some Smile-related material on the box set Good Vibrations: 30 Years of the Beach Boys, released in 1993; the set’s second disc includes about half a CD’s worth of Smile takes on some of the era’s most well-known songs. Several times, Capitol has attempted to release Smile material en masse, either as a single album or a box set compilation. In every case — most prominently a proposed 1988 release for which engineer Mark Linett even prepared tapes of rough mixes — Brian has sabotaged the idea. Some of Linett’s mixes have been included on the Good Vibrations box, though, and his unused mixes have also provided the basis for many of the newer bootleg releases.

In preparing this article, I have used all of the sources available to hear the Smile material. In addition to the officially released versions from the box set, the original albums, and twofer bonus tracks, I have relied mostly on Unsurpassed Masters, Vol. 16, The Lost Smile Sessions, and the Vigotone two-disc set.

PRAYER

Although Brian Wilson didn’t consider the short a cappella group chant “Prayer” a proper album track (and hence didn’t include it on his tracklist memo), it’s clear from the recording sessions for the song that he did intend for “Prayer” to be included on the Smile album. During the recording for the song, Brian told Mike Love (who thought the tune was good enough to be a full song) that “this is a little intro, you know, to the album.” This knowledge makes “Prayer” the only Smile song that holds a definitive place on the album, since Brian’s tracklist was only a preliminary listing of the songs that would be on the album, without indicating the order in which they would appear.

The song was recorded in one day (October 4, 1966) very early in the sessions for Smile, and was probably considered pretty much complete by Brian, since he did no more work on the tune for the remainder of the sessions except to cut out a brief section towards the end. Around five minutes of session tapes from October 4 have been preserved on bootlegs, and they provide a fascinating glimpse into how much work Brian would commit to even the simplest of songs. The tapes reveal that Brian probably didn’t think much of this song — it was the introduction to the album, and he seemed eager to get it out of the way quickly and commence work on the real material. Throughout the recording, he rushes the other Beach Boys, reminding them that they had to get to work on “Wind Chimes” next; in fact, recording on that song was not commenced until the next day.

However, despite Brian’s desire to get this intro out of the way, he didn’t sacrifice any of his well-known perfectionism in recording it. Multiple takes were attempted of the complex multi-part harmonies, with Brian directing the other Beach Boys to get it exactly right. Not only was he trying to get the notes perfect — which the talented vocalists could easily pull off — but he seemed to be aiming for a more abstract quality in the performance that couldn’t easily be explained to the other singers. Once the group gets past actually learning the composition and starts getting the notes right, Brian also instructs them in the actual sound that the vocal blend should have. It is truly amazing to hear the progression from their first tentative stabs at the song to the gorgeous, full-bodied reading that they finally completed.

With its wordless, evocative harmonizing, “Prayer” would have been a perfect introduction to the album’s abstract themes and lyrical content, a nod to the Beach Boys of old while preparing listeners for the group’s new tendencies. As it was, the song wasn’t released officially until the 1969 album 20/20 (renamed “Our Prayer”) with only minimal overdubs added to the final section of the song.

One interesting note from these sessions is that Brian can be heard asking his brother Dennis for a joint between takes, and at another point someone asks “do you guys feel any acid yet?” This is one of many glimpses into exactly the conditions that the group was working under for much of these sessions; although things would get worse later, already there were signs of Brian’s demanding studio persona and the potentially crippling drug use of the band members.

GOOD VIBRATIONS

Saying any more about “Good Vibrations” seems almost redundant, given the large body of work which has already been dedicated to this single. More than virtually any other hit in recorded history, it has been dissected and analyzed from every perspective. And no song can hold up to the scrutiny in quite the way that this one can; it remains as much a part of the rock canon as anything by the Beatles or the Stones, and arguably more influential and inventive than either. The bootleg labels Vigotone and Sea of Tunes have each dedicated an entire three-disc box to just this song, including multiple session takes and overdub sections. Analyzing this song in-depth would take up its own separate essay, and would be far beyond the scope of this piece.

However, it is worth taking a moment here to discuss the place that the track held in the context of the larger Smile project. “Good Vibrations” was not originally part of Brian’s conception for the album. Started in February of 1966, during the Pet Sounds sessions, the single was completed and released by October of that year, while the Beach Boys were involved in work on their next album. The single was at first supposed to have been on Pet Sounds, but Brian quickly realized that his ambitions for the song would have pushed back the album’s release date by an unreasonable amount of time. So, he shelved “Good Vibrations,” working on it only sporadically until Pet Sounds was finished.

Then, throughout the summer Brian recommenced work on the single, recording section after section in an effort to reach pure pop nirvana. The use of the Theremin — an exotic instrument that is played without actually touching it — was revolutionary for the time, but that was nothing compared to Brian’s inventive method of assembling the tune. The song was recorded piecemeal, a massive departure from past procedures that signaled the changes to come for the Smile sessions. Brian fastidiously arranged the recording, hiring professional musicians (as he’d previously done for Pet Sounds) and only bringing the Beach Boys in to sing. His attention to detail extended to every aspect of the recording, as the many, many snippets of available outtakes from the song reveal.

The various bootleg sets dedicated to the song capture the many ideas Brian threw around in recording it, and the extant studio fragments are in many ways as exciting as the finished song. The Capitol Good Vibrations box and the Smiley Smile/Wild Honey twofer include a collage (made by Mark Linett) of various sessions which trace the song’s evolution. The aforementioned twofer also includes the song’s first take ever, recorded on February 18, 1966, which features completely different lyrics than the single version — the original Tony Asher-penned words, before Brian and Mike Love rewrote them in May. What this version reveals, more than anything, is just how complete this song was from the moment it was first attempted; even in its rough form, it’s a beautifully written gem.

Brian made many rough edits of the song during the six months he was working on it, always revising and re-recording until he had exactly the sound he wanted. The result was nothing short of the perfection he sought: a “pocket symphony” in every sense, full of complex arrangements, gorgeous vocal harmonies, and hairpin turns from one section to the next. And yet it was all so beautifully put together that not a note seemed out-of-place, and all of the sudden changes felt natural rather than jarring. It was, and still is, the best pop single ever made.

The importance of “Good Vibrations” for Smile cannot be underestimated either. The single was a complete validation of Brian’s wild ideas, a boost of confidence after the lackluster sales of Pet Sounds. With Pet Sounds, Brian felt he had made his most personal artistic statement yet, but the pride he felt in it was tempered by what he perceived as its failure in the marketplace. “Good Vibrations,” finally, unified Brian’s artistic and commercial ambitions, convincing him that he could be successful with both fans and critics.

The song also pointed the way towards the methods Brian would employ in the studio for Smile. The unique approach to recording “Good Vibrations” had resulted in a truly revolutionary single, and Brian envisioned the next Beach Boys album as being just as radical. He claimed that Smile would be “as much an improvement over [Pet Sounds] as that was over Summer Days,” and he planned to achieve those results by applying his new studio techniques to the entire album. The problem, of course, was that Brian’s new methods, expanded on a grand scale, could (and did) easily sprawl out of control.At the time of “Good Vibrations,” though, everything still seemed possible. The Beach Boys were on top of the charts and selling out concerts all over the world, and Brian was excited to be going back into the studio to work on a new batch of songs with his friend and collaborator Van Dyke Parks. Parks, incidentally, had been asked by Brian to rewrite the lyrics for “Good Vibrations” towards the end of the sessions for the song, but Parks refused so as not to get off on a bad foot with Mike Love, who co-wrote the song with Brian.

When Brian started work on Smile, he did not think of “Good Vibrations” as part of the album. It’s likely that he was later convinced to include it by Capitol executives — who, facing the prospect of a second album in a row without a clear single, were eager to add an established hit to the decidedly uncommercial project. By the time Brian sent Capitol the tracklist memo, he had apparently ceded to the pressure, committing to the tune as one of the 12 tracks. In fact, when the Smile jackets were pressed, the label included the song title written several times below the album title, giving prominent billing to the #1 single in an effort to boost sales.

Still, even as a slightly out-of-place hit stuck onto an in-progress album, the song’s off-kilter majesty seems to fit in well amid the rest of the Smile oddities. Certainly, it would have been a lot more comfortable on that album than it ultimately was on Smiley Smile, where it sticks out rather conspicuously.

HEROES & VILLAINS

The proposed follow-up single to “Good Vibrations” was “Heroes & Villains,” a song which was one of Brian’s primary fixations throughout the album sessions. He worked harder and spent more time on “Heroes” than on any other song for the LP, and his conception of what the track should be changed frequently. Clearly, expectations for the next single after “Good Vibrations” were ludicrously high, and the pressure to create an equally ingenious hit may have been part of the reason that Smile fell apart.

In addition to being the chronological successor to “Vibrations,” “Heroes” inherited that song’s recording methods as well. The production on “Heroes” was conducted piecemeal, spanning virtually the entire time that Brian was working on Smile, with new sections being recorded and rejected all the time. Brian completed numerous rough mixes, with at least four vastly different versions of the song, but he never settled on a final mix during the sessions.“Heroes & Villains,” in many ways can be seen as the lynchpin of the entire Smile project, and a rather weak lynchpin at that. From the very beginning, this song commenced the unwinding of Brian’s ambitions, because unlike “Good Vibrations,” “Heroes & Villains” was not a finished, planned-out song from the moment it was started. Brian wrote and rewrote the song many times, with many different segments that would often be rejected and subsequently spun off into separate songs. As such, the sessions for “Heroes” were among the most prolific (and troublesome) of the period, spawning a whole subset of material that ultimately had little to do with the song itself. Virtually the only constant element in the song from its earliest stages to its official release was the opening verse, which began with the line “I’ve been in this town so long…” All of the available mixes kick off with this familiar energetic opening, but the rest of the song was constantly being re-imagined.

Because of Brian’s ever-shifting vision for the single, “Heroes & Villains” was always a much less cohesive song than “Good Vibrations,” with the different sections often transitioning rather jarringly into one another. “Heroes” is illustrative of the breakdown of Brian’s new compositional methods when subjected to a deadline. After all, “Good Vibrations” alone had taken six months to complete, a rather excessive amount of time to spend on a three-and-a-half minute single. In trying to apply his piecemeal studio techniques to an entire album, Brian overextended himself and ultimately collapsed under the pressure of turning out an LP that would meet his exacting standards.

The sessions for “Good Vibrations,” though long and perhaps overly perfectionist, had at least been working towards the concrete goal of a song that was already written. “Vibrations” had distinct parts, a definite structure, and some key constants in the arrangements at all points in its recording; Brian’s perfectionism, then, was limited to getting each part to sound just right. With “Heroes” (and the Smile album in general), Brian had no definite goal to work towards, and in addition to getting the music to sound perfect, he also obsessed over the proper placement of each individual piece of the puzzle. To make things worse, he often redefined his objectives in mid-thought, as we can hear from the mounds of half-finished Smile scraps. “Heroes” was continually reinvented, each time drastically altering the tone and idea of the composition, while scrapping weeks of work on a whim. As such, the sessions stalled — for the song and the album as a whole — and eventually ground to a halt altogether. In February 1967, Brian concentrated all his efforts on the single, stopping work on all other songs. Nevertheless, by March the sessions had broken down yet again without an acceptable mix, and for a few weeks in April Brian considered “Vega-Tables” to be the first single, probably because “Heroes” had been so problematic.

What remains of “Heroes & Villains,” though, is nevertheless fascinating. Even more fractured (and arguably more inspired) than “Good Vibrations,” this single track was a distillation of everything that Brian was working towards in this period. The song, along with its numerous spun-off tracks and discarded sections, is a pocket opera where “Good Vibrations” was a “pocket symphony.” In all its various versions, “Heroes & Villains” told a story, though the actual narrative changed depending on what sections were being added or discarded at any given time.

Brian regarded the track as “a three minute musical comedy,” a fulfillment of his aim to fuse humor into a rock record. “Heroes,” as heard in its original Smile context, is not a comedy song per se, but its lighthearted tone and frantic lack of structure give it a distinctly fun feel. The version of the song that was eventually released, however, contained few hints of what Brian had been working on for Smile. The official follow-up to “Good Vibrations” was not released until July 31, 1967, almost three months after the album sessions fell apart. Hastily re-recorded and assembled for the Smiley Smile LP, this official version of the “Heroes” single bears little resemblance to the various Smile takes, in either tone or quality.

Although this version is, on its own merits, a pretty remarkable tune, it could not have been anything but a disappointment coming as it did on the heels of the album collapse and the incredible hype that had been built up over the preceding months. The disjointed mix which appears on Smiley Smile was cobbled together from a combination of new recordings and raw material from the various Smile takes. In fact, a surprising amount of the single does come from the 1966 and early 1967 sessions, but its arrangement and production are intentionally rough and slipshod, indicating the complete end of an era; after this song, Brian would no longer be the studio guru.

The single starts familiarly enough with the famed first verse, just as all known versions of the song did. Following this is a segment called “Bicycle Rider” that dates from the Smile sessions, illustrating Brian’s wild creative process at this time. This brief theme — which echoes the “Heroes” melody — was originally part of “Do You Like Worms?,” which was developed concurrently with “Heroes.” During the recording of Smile, Brian would frequently take sections from one song and move them into a different one; he was continually trying out new things just to see what they would sound like. And “Worms” and “Heroes” were almost certainly related to each other to begin with, so moving “Bicycle Rider” into the single was a natural idea.

The theme itself appears in several different forms from the Smile era. Many versions are instrumental, featuring just the familiar piano melody and bassline, but there also exist several different lyrics. For “Worms,” the song features the brief lyric, “Bicycle rider, just see what you’ve done/ done to the church of the American Indian,” backed up by “oga-chucka” backing vocals; these words echo the theme of westward expansion running through “Worms.” The version of “Bicycle Rider” used on the “Heroes” single release replaces these lyrics with a chant of “heroes and villains” that follows the same melody. Although versions of both “Worms” and “Heroes” exist with and without the different vocals, it’s likely that “Bicycle Rider” was intended to have lyrics in both incarnations had the songs been finished.

Following “Bicycle Rider” in the Smiley Smile single was a newly recorded short verse (starting with the lyrics “stand and fall…”), then a vocal breakdown of “doo doo doos,” leading into the “my children were raised…” section. The song then repeats the opening verse, slower and accompanied only by piano; Brian cleverly makes a slight change in the familiar wording, singing “I’ve been in this town so long/ so long to the city.” This section ends with “heroes and…” which cuts off to a reprise of the “Bicycle Rider” theme as a fade to the song.

Although this is the most well-known version of the single, it’s instructive to take a similarly close look at an earlier mix of the song. As was already mentioned, “Heroes & Villains” was the prime example of Brian’s “modular songwriting” (as Van Dyke Parks called it), a song written in parts and constructed piecemeal. Before the Smile sessions collapsed completely, Brian completed many different rough mixes of “Heroes & Villains,” each time with different constituent segments. The last one he finished, commonly called the “Cantina” mix, is also the only existing Smile-era mix of the song we have today.

The “Cantina” version – named this by collectors after a line in a verse towards the end of the song — is commonly thought to have been a strong contender for a single release at the time it was completed in February of 1967. Engineer Chuck Britz even recalls mixing the song for a single release, which never happened for various reasons. It’s possible that the song simply didn’t come out because of the royalties lawsuit that the Beach Boys and Capitol were embroiled with at the time, but perhaps more likely given Brian’s continued tinkering with the song is that he wasn’t quite happy with it yet.

Nevertheless, this mix of “Heroes” remains, for many Smile fans, the definitive version of the song, and a much more viable single than the one that actually came out. Interestingly, although it was the last version of the song completed before Brian compiled the single, this mix is almost completely different from the one already discussed. After the familiar opening verse (the same take used in the single), the song transitions into the same a cappella breakdown that was included at a later point in the Smiley Smile mix. This part is followed by the “In the Cantina” verse, which Brian wrote and recorded on January 27, 1967. At the end of this section, there is a shout of “you’re under arrest,” signaling the abrupt transition into the next part. On the session tapes for the “Cantina” verse, an extra brief section of “woo woo woo” vocals precedes the policeman’s shout; Brian excised these vox from his rough mix to smoothen the flow.

Following “In the Cantina,” the song moves on to the “my children were raised” verse; the vocals for this part were re-recorded for the Smiley Smile version, and this earlier take has a much more upbeat reading of the lyric. Additionally, there is an extended verse (with music very similar to that on the opening verse) featuring the lyrics “at three score and five/ I’m very much alive,” which doesn’t appear on the eventual single release. The song next breaks down into a very interesting segment of repeating “dum dum dum” vocals that almost sound like the tape is breaking. Listening to the sessions for this part, however, reveals that much of the effect was actually accomplished without the aid of tape effects. Brian in fact composed this vocal bassline for the other Beach Boys to sing, and the arrangement of voices makes the part sound like it’s coming out of a skipping record player even on the original tapes. Brian is often credited for his advanced production techniques, but his compositional skills were often just as inventive, and are too often given the short shrift. Obviously, Brian still manipulated the end of this part to make it completely break down.

This breakdown leads into the song’s coda, one of the most problematic parts of “Heroes.” Brian fiddled with the coda to “Heroes” very often, and for this version he took a part from another song, as he frequently did. This segment, with its clip-clop percussion and a vaguely Western-sounding melody, was for a long time thought to be the widely discussed but unheard “Barnyard” segment. In actuality, this part was actually taken from the end of the song “The Old Master Painter/You Are My Sunshine.”

The differences between the Smiley Smile and “Cantina” versions reveal just how flexible “Heroes & Villains was, structurally. Although there is a certain similarity between the two songs, the structures are completely divergent, and tonally they are rather distinct. Whereas the Smiley Smile single is characterized by hasty, haphazard edits and drastically changing moods, the “Cantina” mix is much more consistent throughout, its edits still abrupt, but more logical. In this sense, the “Cantina” mix is a better follow-up to “Good Vibrations,” since it is comprised of very disparate parts that still fit together naturally and sound like they go well together. Certainly, part of the charm of the single mix is its haphazard, rough-sounding construction, but it’s at the sacrifice of coherence.

Earlier versions of “Heroes & Villains” probably hold even less in common with one another than this example illustrates. It is known that Brian made several rough edits of “Heroes” prior to completing the “Cantina” mix, but none of these edits have surfaced. The first version of the song was mixed on May 11, 1966, but it was unfortunately taped over; it apparently included “You Are My Sunshine” as a section and held little in common with the more familiar recordings of “Heroes.” The next time Brian mixed down the song, it was probably somewhat more related to its eventual version, though still just a distant cousin. This October 20 mix is the source of the “I’ve been in this town” first verse, which was the only segment of the song to carry through to all subsequent mix-downs of the single.

A piano-only demo of this incarnation of the song appeared recently on the 2000 Endless Harmony soundtrack, and it reveals “Heroes” in its original form, as a farm-themed composition with an almost completely different structure than the one we know today (more about this when we discuss “I’m in Great Shape”). Later, the entire second half of this version was removed, its constituent parts moved into other songs, and new parts moved into “Heroes.” This rearrangement probably featured at least some of the new verses that appear in the later mixes (“three score and five,” “my children were raised,” etc.) and the “Bicycle Rider” theme from “Do You Like Worms?”

During these early phases of recording, Brian completely changed the structure of “Heroes” very frequently. He recorded many different parts of varying length, and probably tried them out at different points in the track. A few brief a cappella chants, like “Do a Lot” (which later became “Mama Says” on Smiley Smile) and “Whistle In,” were first attempted at these sessions. Where these parts might have been placed within the song is a matter of guessing, at best, since there are no rough mixes from this phase in the song’s evolution. At some point, however, Brian replaced “Bicycle Rider” with the new “Cantina” verse; presumably, “BR” was returned to its original home in “Worms” at this point, although Brian eventually chose to use “Bicycle Rider” in “Heroes” again when he re-assembled the song for Smiley Smile.

Although the “Cantina” mix was the last completed version of “Heroes & Villains” during the early 1967 sessions, Brian did record more work on the song before canceling the project altogether. The last recordings on “Heroes & Vilains” during Smile — known collectively as the “version 4” or “part 2” variations — comprised several main pieces of music. These parts contain some of the most gorgeous vocal harmonies that the Beach Boys recorded during these sessions; for those who miss the complex multipart singing that the Boys abandoned almost permanently after 1967, this is the place to start exploring Smile.

“How I Love My Girl” seems to have been part of a new, upbeat reading of “Heroes & Villains” that Brian was working on around this time. Starting with soulful, barbershop-type “da da da” harmonizing, this piece then ends with a harmony on the title line. It seems likely from a few rough partial mixes from this time that Brian intended for the “How I Love My Girl” part to transition directly into a new, uptempo reading of a “heroes and villains” chant. Several chants of this kind from the “version 4” sessions exist, with various musical backings; the common component is a much more overtly happy bounce to the melody, and more complex vocal parts than appear on pretty much any other Smile outtake. These variations are truly beautiful, indicating that even at this late point in the sessions, in what must have been a stressful recording climate, Brian was perfectly capable of writing fantastic music.

It’s also interesting to note that, despite all the known problems, Brian was still very much in control of the sessions. The other Beach Boys may have been fed up with Brian by this point, but they didn’t let it bleed into the recording much on these tapes; Brian dominates the process, directing the rest of the group just as obsessively as he did on the much earlier “Prayer” sessions. At one point, he even instructs them to sing while smiling, and they run through multiple takes of every part. It’s sad to think that maybe, even this late in the sessions, the whole project was still in relatively good shape and might’ve been salvaged.

In addition to “How I Love My Girl,” these late “Heroes” recordings also yielded a new song called “With Me Tonight.” This track, which appeared in a new version on Smiley Smile, was first attempted during these late Smile dates; in fact, there were no Smile dates actually logged under the name “With Me Tonight,” which suggests that perhaps this track started life as a late-era addition to “Heroes.” Several recordings of varying lengths were attempted during the “version 4” sessions. A few short instrumental recordings — with, incidentally, a melody somewhat similar to “Heroes” itself — lend credence to the idea of this track as originally being just a part of “Heroes.” One very rough instrumental take was introduced as the “tag to part 1,” which would mark it as a possible replacement for the “Sunshine” tag that ended the “Cantina” mix.

Longer recordings of the song — particularly the “on and on she goes” vocal intro — could be either a replacement for the “Cantina” verse or an extension of the song. Some press accounts at the time contained suggestions of a five or six-minute “Heroes & Villains” single, so it’s possible that the “version 4” variations of “With Me Tonight” and “How I Love My Girl” would have made up the second half of the song. This theory loses a little credence, though, since there also exists a fully realized complete song take of “With Me Tonight” with fleshed out instrumentation and a structure similar to the way it would eventually appear on Smiley Smile. Most likely, “With Me Tonight” started life as part of “Heroes & Villains,” but by the end of the sessions it was almost certainly considered its own separate track, perhaps scheduled to replace a track like “Surf’s Up” or “Do You Like Worms?,” both of which had received less-than-enthusiastic reactions from the other Beach Boys.

There has been some discussion surrounding the “version 4” tapes of a possible two-part “Heroes & Villains” single. The theory was first suggested (or, ahem, invented) by Domenic Priore in “Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile!,” and many others have picked it up from him. Priore suggested that “Heroes & Villains” was to have been a two-part single release, with side A being the “Cantina” mix and side B being an extended, mostly a cappella re-visitation of the main themes, featuring the “version 4” variations. The problem, unfortunately, is that not only is there virtually no evidence for this, but there is actually a wealth of evidence to the contrary. Brian even explicitly said in contemporary interviews that he had no idea what the B-side for the single would be, and was reportedly considering several different songs for the role (for Smiley Smile, he settled on the a cappella chant “You’re Welcome” at the last minute). Many bootlegs (most notably the Vigotone set), have followed Priore’s lead and produced supposed “part 2” mixes, but inevitably these have merely been edited together by bootleggers from the “version 4” variations. It’s far more likely, given the existing evidence, that Brian intended this material to be a part of the proper single somehow.

Regardless of what Brian’s plans for the single may have been, he was chronically unable to bring them to fruition. Throughout most of February and March, he worked almost exclusively on “Heroes & Villains,” recording for the “Cantina” and “version 4” mixes of the proposed single. But despite his best efforts, he could not seem to create a mix that satisfied whatever he was seeking. The pressure of perfection was simply too much for Brian, and he couldn’t have been unaware of the multiple deadlines that were slipping behind him with no finished product in sight. Still, he refused to simply “settle” for a mix, and by the end of March he had given up on the song altogether. He abandoned “Heroes” unfinished and shifted work to “Vega-Tables,” which he started calling the next single. Brian seemed unable to do what he had done so confidently with “Good Vibrations,” which was to craft a cohesive, accessible single from a pile of scattershot material. The greater pressure on him during the Smile recording, his deteriorating relationships with the band, Van Dyke, and Capitol, and the multiple problems still lurking with the rest of the album must have been a tremendous strain on his creative process.

Even so, from its first recordings to its last, “Heroes & Villains” was always the most important song on Smile. No song changed more drastically during the recording sessions, and no song seemed to have a bigger grasp on Brian’s imagination. It was the only song to be worked on at all stages of the project, and its transformations are a good indicator of just how intensive the recording of this album was. “Heroes & Villains” also spawned a wealth of material that wound up not being related to the song at all; “Do You Like Worms?,” “I’m in Great Shape,” “Barnyard,” “With Me Tonight,” and smaller parts of countless other songs all developed out of the single. It is impossible to imagine what Smile might have been without considering what could rightly be called the “Heroes & Villains” suite, a set of material all developed from the same source, following common threads of thematic ideas and musical motifs.

DO YOU LIKE WORMS?

“Do You Like Worms?” has already been discussed a little in the context of “Heroes & Villains,” but in fact it was considered by Brian to be its own separate song in spite of the fact that it recycles some of the same melodic ideas. Recording on “Worms” was started on October 18, 1966, which was when the entirety of the instrumental track was laid down (plus Brian’s lead vocals). The “oga-chucka” backing vocals were added by the rest of the group on October 21, though the lyrics for the “Bicycle Rider” chorus weren’t recorded until January at a “Heroes & Villains” date.

The song was imagined as a lyrical journey across the United States from coast to coast, though in its surviving form it doesn’t quite realize this ambition. Nevertheless, it’s an admirable experiment that diverges from the rest of the Smile songs while remaining tied to “Heroes.” It starts with a rumbling rhythm on trashy-sounding drums (which is probably just due to the nature of bootlegs, though much of the Smile material is intentionally a lot rougher-sounding than Brian had ever recorded previously) and the Beach Boys singing the refrain “rock, roll, play myth rock, roll over.”

This refrain was to have been the song’s chorus; the verses have the “Bicycle Rider” melody, with the original lyrics that Van Dyke Parks wrote about “the church of the American Indian.” Lyrics were apparently written (but never recorded) for the entire song — including the missing phrases “Once upon the Sandwich Isles, the social structure steamed upon Hawaii” and “having returned to the West or East Indies — we always got them confused.” The song’s intended journey across America, obviously, was not to have been an idyllic but a satirical one, commenting on the colonizing and exploitation of the Americas by our European ancestors. These lyrics were either never recorded or were lost, and the only surviving verse vocal is the previously mentioned “Bicycle Rider” segment. It’s interesting that the reason this vocal exists at all is because it was actually recorded for “Heroes & Villains” when Brian was toying with splicing “Bicycle Rider” into the single; otherwise, “Worms” might have remained entirely vocal-less.

After running through a straight verse/chorus/verse structure for just over two minutes, there’s an unexpected bridge with Brian singing an approximation of a Hawaiian hula chant before returning to a fade of the rumbling drums segment, this time sans the chorus vocals. As with so much of the Smile material, it’s frustrating to hear this tune castrated as it exists today, without its full lyrics. Perhaps the reason that so much of this music seems experimental to us today is that it was unfinished, because it’s clear that Brian — his unconventional production methods aside — had rather standard commercial aspirations for a good deal of these songs. “Worms,” if it had ever been completed, might have been a stunning pop song.

But it was not to be, and not least of all because Mike Love made the song a particular target of his traditionalist hatred. Although it’s certainly not the easiest Beach Boys song to digest, “Worms” would probably have seemed much more palatable with its finished vocals. Again, for all of his experimentation and tweaking — and with a few exceptions like “Heroes & Villains” — Brian wasn’t doing anything too radical with song forms on Smile. A lot is made of the proposed multi-song suites and experimental collages, and the fact that so much of the Smile material is instrumental or at least has very minimal vocals. But these details are more due to the sessions’ failure than to the successes; Brian intended for his masterpiece album to be the best collection of pop songs ever made, and not much more.

Clearly, he had conceptual ambitions, too. “Worms” itself was part of a much larger conceptual suite built around the “Heroes” single and possibly also including “Barnyard,” “I’m in Great Shape,” and others (more on all this later). Additionally, there are common thematic threads running through most of Van Dyke Parks’ lyrics for the album, not quite creating a coherent narrative, but definitely constituting a step towards the concept albums that would become all the rage a few years later (you can decide for yourselves whether that’s a good or a bad thing). These ambitions, though, did not include drastic changes to pop music forms or structures themselves. Remember, Brian was using as his model the Beatles, and especially Rubber Soul, so his primary goal was to craft a set of songs, unified in mood and quality, that could rival such a pop pinnacle.

Though almost all of the songs for Smile were recorded in sections, the mixes that Brian assembled from these parts by and large followed standard verse/chorus/verse conventions, with maybe a bridge or extended coda thrown in there for variety. This is perhaps hard to grasp for latter-day Beach Boys enthusiasts who tout this album as a lost experimental work so far ahead of its time that it’s nearly incomprehensible. Brian was a bit ahead of the curve here, but just a bit. And ultimately, the Beatles won the race to the psychedelic finish line, releasing their psychedelic pop masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper’s, just as Brian’s work on Smile was disintegrating for good.

I’M IN GREAT SHAPE

One of Brian’s many ideas for Smile was that it should contain several musical suites composed of smaller interlocking segments. For a long time, the identity of the song “I’m in Great Shape” was one of the album’s greatest mysteries: it was named on the tracklist memo and listed on a few recording dates and tape boxes, but no definitive tapes representing it had surfaced. A few clues pointed the way, however, and it is now generally accepted that “I’m in Great Shape” was in fact a piece that Brian described in the music press at the time as “a barnyard suite.” 

A central concept of Smile was that it would be an exploration of the American experience, and “I’m in Great Shape” would have represented the tranquil old world life of the American farmer. As with “Do You Like Worms?,” this suite grew out of the “Heroes & Villains” sessions, and many of the recordings which have been linked with this piece are believed to have been rejected sections of “Heroes & Villains.” In fact, Brian’s early vision of the second half of “H&V” may have been the original barnyard suite, before he separated the two songs, with the barnyard parts becoming known collectively as “I’m in Great Shape.”

In the fall of ’66, Brian performed a solo piano version of “Heroes & Villains” for radio DJ Harmony Harv, as a rough demonstration of what the song would sound like. This is the recording that appeared as “Heroes & Villains demo” on Endless Harmony, finally revealing the identity of “Great Shape” and causing a huge stir among Smile fans. After the familiar first verse (“I’ve been in this town so long…”), there is a segment which has otherwise never been heard elsewhere. Featuring the lyrics “Freshenin’ air around my head/ mornings tumble out of bed/ eggs and grits and lickety split/ look at my ???/ I’m in the great shape of the north country,” this section (although no real studio recording of it has ever been heard) provides the crucial link between “I’m in Great Shape” and the barnyard suite. Brian followed this with a section featuring more lyrics about the farmyard backed by the appropriate animal noises, which he urged some unidentified others in Harv’s studio to perform. This second part was probably a rare vocal performance of a piece which has been known simply as “Barnyard.”

Brian split the “I’m in Great Shape”/“Barnyard” sections from “Heroes & Villains” sometime in the late fall or early winter of ’66, replacing the whole farm-themed part with the “Bicycle Rider” theme from “Do You Like Worms?” Thus, by the time Brian sent Capitol the song list in December, “I’m in Great Shape” was considered its own song. There are still no proper studio recordings of the track, even though sessions under that name were logged on October 17 (vocals) and November 29 (instrumental). What the finished suite might have sounded like is anybody’s guess, but it would almost certainly have included all the excised farm lyrics from “Heroes & Villains,” as well as “Barnyard.” It has also been suggested that “Do a Lot,” the ubiquitous vocal chant which started life in “Heroes & Villains,” may have been at least temporarily considered another section of the “Great Shape” suite.

The track for “Barnyard” that’s appeared on bootlegs is based on the idea of the “out in the farmyard” section that Brian ran through on the Harmony Harv show following the “great shape” part. The actual studio version is much different from that demo, without the lyrics (“out in the barnyard, the chickens do their number/ out in the farmyard, the cook is chopping lumber/ jump in the pigpen, next time I’ll take my shoes off/ hit the dirt, do two and a half/ next time I’ll leave my hat on”), and with a vaguely Western-sounding clip-clop feel. The Beach Boys provide a lilting vocal harmony as various animal noises fill the background; it’s a charming little track, and it’s likely that once “Bicycle Rider” replaced it as the coda to “Heroes & Villains,” “Barnyard” was moved into the similarly themed “I’m in Great Shape.” Brian probably intended to record the “out in the farmyard” vocals to complete this part, but never got around to it.

The emergence of the Harmony Harv demo on the soundtrack to the documentary Endless Harmony resolved the longest-running controversy of the Smile tracklist. Prior to this, theories regarding the track’s identity were uncertain at best, and the track “I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night” (which has since been associated almost certainly with “The Elements”) was frequently thought to be the mystery track. Although the debate is still not one hundred percent settled, the current theory regarding “I’m In Great Shape” is fairly credible and fits in with all the available evidence.

THE ELEMENTS

Like “I’m in Great Shape,” “The Elements” was conceived as a set of connected pieces arranged into a suite. As an integral component of the album’s musical and thematic content, this suite would have consisted of four individual themes, each one representing a different natural element: fire, earth, air, and water. Of these, the identity of only one element is definitely known. A piece alternately known as “Fire” and “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow” was to have been the first song in the suite. Recorded on November 28, 1966, the piece is a musical approximation of the great Chicago fire of 1871 (which was started by the titular bovine).

Much has been made of Brian’s eccentric personality over the years, with many popular accounts likening him to such damaged geniuses as Syd Barrett or Roky Erikson. This reputation has been fueled by stories like the report of Brian wanting a sandbox brought into his home studio so he could play piano with his toes in the sand. Another major source of the mythology surrounding Brian originated with the “Fire” piece. The recording session for the song contains one of the most touchingly idiosyncratic examples of Brian’s bizarre behavior at this point: he reportedly started a small fire in the studio, then equipped all the musicians with fireman helmets and buckets of water while they played the song.

Furthermore, Brian became terrified by the song when he came to believe that recording it had unleashed a rash of fires on downtown Los Angeles that night. He later vowed to re-record the song as “a candle,” not wanting such a powerful force on his positive album. Nevertheless, Brian apparently never re-made the track, and the only existing version is a rather avant-garde instrumental featuring screechy sirens, chaotic rhythms, and a generally crazed mood. Despite his seeming reluctance to work further on the song, Brian actually recorded several different sections for “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow,” including a chaotic whistle-filled intro, the rumbling main body, and a slowed-down fade of drums for the ending.

In spite of Brian’s frightening experience with “Fire,” the very next day he returned to the studio to record a track he described as “the rebuilding after the fire.” This track is very likely a medley of the standard “I Wanna Be Around” with the Brian composition “Friday Night,” which has also surfaced on bootlegs under the title “The Woodshop Song.” The latter nomenclature originates from the various building, sawing, and hammering sounds which adorn the song’s second half. It is highly likely that this song was the second part of the “Elements” suite, probably representing the earth element. However, it’s also worth noting that “Vega-Tables” has also been linked with the earth element, particularly by one of Frank Howle’s illustrations which depicts the song as one of the elements. Still — especially since both “Vega-Tables” and “The Elements” are listed separately on Brian’s tracklist — “I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night” is a much more compelling choice for the earth element.

“Friday Night” has also been associated somewhat speculatively with “I’m in Great Shape,” especially since the sessions for the track coincide with instrumental sessions from the same day that were logged under the “Great Shape” name. However, the release of the “Heroes & Villains” demo on Endless Harmony has largely cleared up that mystery, since “Great Shape” is now believed to be comprised of the “freshenin’ air” verses that were excised from “Heroes.” The naming of the November 29 session may be explained by a simple mix-up — sessions from this era were frequently misnamed — or else “Friday Night” could actually have been considered for the “Great Shape” barnyard suite at one point. Brian’s description of the song as “rebuilding after the fire,” though, inextricably links this session to “The Elements.”

The identities of the other elements are much less easily obtained. Of the air element, Brian once casually remarked that he and Van Dyke Parks had recorded a short little piano piece to represent this element, but no such recording has ever surfaced. Various writers have suggested various titles as being the elusive air piece, but there is really no conclusive evidence for any of the proposed songs. Probably, the piece is exactly what Brian described, a short piano fragment that has as-of-yet gone unnoticed amidst the countless hours of Smile tapes filling the Capitol vaults. Most of the “Elements” pieces that do exist share a rough, almost tossed-off quality in contrast to the more meticulous nature of the main body of Smile music, so it’s easy to imagine such a recording being overlooked.

The water piece is another mystery. The most consistently suggested song for this element is “I Love to Say Da-Da,” a short minute-and-a-half instrumental which doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere else. It was the last song Brian attempted during the Smile sessions — or, more properly, the first song attempted after the sessions had collapsed — recorded on May 16-18, and one more session was scheduled for the song in mid- to late May (it was canceled with the album). The “wa-wa-hoo-ah” vocal chant (possibly evoking the word “water?”) lends credence to the song’s place in the “Elements” suite, but otherwise there’s no link between the pieces. In fact, “Da-Da” probably started as a section of “Heroes & Villains,” since a short early version of it entitled “All Day” was attempted during a “Heroes” date. The version of “Da-Da” available today was edited together by Mark Linett from material recorded May 16; the other two dates yielded only slightly different results, and the hint that there may have been a third section of the song which was never fully recorded.

Another possibility for the water element is “The Water Chant,” a brief a cappella track — much like “Prayer” and “Do a Lot” — featuring wordless harmonizing that suggests the sound of water. It’s only a very small snippet, and would be the shortest known piece in the “Elements” suite, but if “Elements” was meant to be a single track composed of shorter segments, it would make sense for one or two of them to be fairly pithy.

As an interesting aside, the Smile version of “The Water Chant” was later inserted whole into the middle of the song “Cool, Cool Water” on 1970’s Sunflower. Because of this link, “Cool, Cool Water” has often been believed to be a Smile song, and a demo recording of it even appeared on the Vigotone bootleg. However, the song wasn’t actually started until the end of 1967 during the sessions for Wild Honey, then shelved and returned to later in 1970 — the demo on the Vigotone bootleg was probably from the Wild Honey sessions. The version which appears on Sunflower was assembled at the latter date, with overdubs and the addition of “The Water Chant,” from the original Wild Honey backing track. Although it’s not a proper Smile song, “Cool, Cool Water” does have a link to the Smile era, since it was first recorded just two weeks after the sessions dissolved, and it is a melodic relative of “I Love to Say Da-Da.”

VEGA-TABLES

Thematically, Smile was many, many things. In addition to the thread of Americana running through “Do You Like Worms?” and the other “Heroes”-related songs, the album addressed the natural world (the various “Elements” pieces and “Wind Chimes”), spirituality (“Prayer” and “Wonderful”), and health and fitness. The latter theme emerged from one of Brian Wilson’s primary concerns at the time, as expressed in his pre-Smile intention to record an exercise LP.

Brian’s interest in health, as with many of his interests during this period, could be considered almost obsessive. At one studio session, he even recorded a lengthy monologue in the guise of a public service announcement pronouncing the dangers of smog. On the actual album, though, there ambitions were primarily funneled into “Vega-Tables,” which was considered a major track, and the a cappella chant “Do a Lot” (which became a part of the Smile-era recording of “Vega-Tables” after a tenure in “Heroes & Villains”).

It’s curious that “Vega-Tables” was given such a prominent place on Smile; in many respects, it comes across as a bit of a frivolous joke, but, of course, that’s not so out-of-line with the album’s essential aesthetic anyway. In virtually every version — and there are many, as you’d expect — the song is driven primarily by piano and odd percussive noises and sound effects created with voices and mouth sounds. But for all its light-hearted mood and general silliness, Brian did intend for the song to have a serious positive message: he genuinely wanted people to eat their vegetables.

The song was first attempted in November in a fairly straightforward run-through of the main melody, with somewhat different, trippier lyrics by Parks, but “Vega-Tables” wasn’t really tackled in earnest until April. At that point, Brian was apparently dissatisfied with work on “Heroes & Villains,” and in April suddenly announced that the first single from Smile would be a song called “Vega-Tables,” backed by “Wonderful.” Brian even posed in front of a fruit stand for the cover of a potential “Vega-Tables” single. Then, he dove headfirst into sessions that were just as intensive as the ones for “Heroes.”

In stark contrast to the earlier November version, the April mixes of “Vega-Tables” were much more complex, in line with the multi-part composing that Brian had been attempting with the rest of the album songs. Certainly, it should not be thought that switching the lead single was an act of surrender or compromise by Brian; he intended the finished “Vega-Tables” single to be just as impressive as he had wanted the “Heroes” single to be, and he simply channeled his energy reserves into the new song.

One of the first elements added to “Vega-Tables” was the chant “Do a Lot,” which had first been recorded as a possible “Heroes” insert. Of course, it made much more sense in the new single, and it was Brian’s first choice for a fade, acting as an extended coda complete with a whistled melody and junky percussion. Brian may have later replaced this fade with the shorter section that’s been labeled simply “fade to Vega-Tables,” an upbeat jog through the main melody with “bum bum bum” vocals.

Perhaps the most interesting anecdote regarding this song is the story of those odd background noises that add a kind of percussive clatter to the verses. These sounds were created by the Beach Boys by chewing vegetables and drinking water, adding a distinctive playful extra to the arrangement. And, in a typically quirky move, the band brought in none other than Paul McCartney to chew vegetables with them. On April 10, McCartney spent the day in the studio with Brian and the Boys, playing them a recently completed demo record of “A Day in the Life” from Sgt. Pepper’s. Apparently the Boys and McCartney got along well, and later that night they recorded a joking cover of “On Top of Old Smokey” together. Al Jardine even remembers McCartney somewhat taking control of the “Vega-Tables” session from a passive Brian — which would be indicative of Brian’s feelings of inferiority and desperate competition with regards to the Beatles.

Nevertheless, Brian did complete a lot of work on the song in April. In addition to numerous takes of “Vega-Tables,” “Do a Lot,” and the new fade, he supervised a re-recording of the proposed b-side “Wonderful” and probably some other inserts and unused instrumental sections as well. Most of the existing mixes segue from the main section into the “Do a Lot” fade, then the proper fade — although Brian probably would have picked one or the other for the completed song.

This Smile version, this could’ve been single, bears little resemblance to the new take that was ultimately released on Smiley Smile later that year. The renaming to the more traditional spelling “Vegetables” was the least of the changes; the rousing piano melody of the intro was entirely replaced with a simple, repetitive bass line accompanied by the sound of water pouring and vegetables chomping. All of this was newly recorded during the home sessions in mid-1967, and its rough production and stark arrangement is a rather sad contrast to the full, grandiose versions Brian had mixed down in April and May. “Do a Lot” is also noticeably absent, and the song fades instead on a segment stolen from the Smile-era recordings, starting with the uptempo singing of “I know that you’ll feel better…”

CABINESSENCE

As with many of the Smile tracks, “Cabinessence” was recorded piecemeal, with several different section comprising the finished song — although in this case all three known sections were recorded on the same date, October 3, 1966. Less complex than “Heroes & Villains” or “Good Vibrations,” “Cabinessence” was still a lovely track with very distinct movements, an excellent example of Van Dyke Parks’ impressionistic lyrics. Recording started on “Cabinessence” under the title “Home on the Range,” the name for the first section of the song, which featured a simple piano motif, plucked banjo, and horns. Vocals for this segment — the playful “doing doing” backing melody with a typically Parksian lyric — were recorded, but many bootleg recordings feature the first “Home on the Range” verse without the vocal overdubs. Either way, this piece provides a slow, languid lead-up to the next part.

Lyrically, “Cabinessence” follows several threads related to the Old West, including the expansion of America through the railroads, the immigrant’s role in the U.S., and life on the farm. Whereas “Home on the Range” was a laidback approximation of the old-time farm at dawn — an aural painting of a relaxing horseback ride across the plains, perhaps — in “Who Ran the Iron Horse,” the rapid development of the rail system completely alters life on the plains. The lyrics to “Home on the Range” provided a few clues of the shift to come (“welcomes the time for a change”), and the frantic pace of the next section is the embodiment of all the transformations that American society has gone through as technology evolves. The title line of “Who Ran the Iron Horse” is repeated rapidly over ascending backing vox, a thick bassline, and various instruments that get hidden in the maelstrom, conjuring images of swiftly revolving steam engine wheels.

The third section of “Cabinessence,” which is often left off some bootleg mixes, was called “The Grand Coulee Dam.” This section is musically somewhat similar to the earlier “Home on the Range,” with the lyrics “have you seen the Grand Coulee working on the railroad/ over and over the crow flies uncover the corn field/ etc.” Although it’s a lovely part, it apparently caused a surprising amount of controversy within the band. Mike Love in particular objected to the line “over and over the crow flies uncover the corn field,” asking Van Dyke Parks what it meant. When Parks somewhat cheekily replied that he didn’t know, this of course enraged Love, who firmly believed in concrete rather than abstract lyrics.

But despite Parks’ response, there does seem to be a fair amount of meaning invested in the lyrics to “Cabinessence,” although it accomplishes its objectives more through mood and images rather than any direct narrative. The lyrics to “Home on the Range” establish a pastoral feeling of innocence and quietude, evoking the old times before industrial progress changed everything, while the grating circular motif of “Who Ran the Iron Horse” represents the wheels of change itself. Coming on the heels of “Iron Horse” — which implies never-ending cycles of progress in its repetition — “Grand Coulee” is a more impressionistic account of the grand scale of progress. Perhaps it’s meant to be the perspective of a bird flying over America, watching railroads being built and farm machines at work. Brian described this particular part as Chinese laborers building the rail lines and glancing up to see a crow fly overhead.

Although many bootlegs simply string different recordings of the three sections of “Cabinessence” together in order to create a rough mix, the actual finished recording of the song would have been much different. The three-and-a-half minute version on the Sea of Tunes bootleg Unsurpassed Masters, Vol. 16 provides a good guide to the song’s structure, as does the more widely available version that the Beach Boys completed without Brian’s input for 20/20 in 1969. On the Sea of Tunes version, “Home on the Range” is used for the verses, with “Iron Horse” as a kind of simple chorus. The pattern repeats twice — verse/chorus/verse/chorus — before adding the “Grand Coulee Dam” section as a tag, fading out on the repetition of the line “over and over the crow flies uncover the corn field.” The version of the song included on 20/20 mimics this structure, using some of the same recordings, plus overdubs and some new bits.

In addition to the three extant segments of “Cabinessence,” Van Dyke Parks wrote lyrics for a fourth section, which was either never recorded or has since been lost. The lyrics for this part (which may have been recorded on October 11, if it was at all) go: “Reconnected telephone direct dialing/ different color cords to your extension/ don’t forget to mention this is a recording/ even though the echoes through my mind/ have filtered through the pines/ I came and found my peace/ and this is not a recording/ Doobie doo/ Doobie doo/ or not doobie.” Despite this exclusion, it is probable that “Cabinessence” was nearly complete very early in the Smile sessions. Brian returned to the song later in October and again in December, but the only rough mix available is the Sea of Tunes one, and it’s likely that despite Brian’s later attempts, the song was just about done in the state we can hear it in now.

WONDERFUL

Since Brian Wilson opened Smile with a hymn and once described these songs as “teenage symphonies to God,” it’s clear that spirituality was one of his main concerns when recording this album. “Wonderful” is the album’s most lyrically spiritual song, an examination of faith and innocence (or, more concretely, virginity) hidden within one of Van Dyke Parks’ serpentine lyrics. Certainly, the words Parks scribed for this lovely song are typically obtuse, with multiple meanings and entendres embedded in the layered lyrics.

One popular line of thought runs that the song is a literal (well, as close to literal as Parks ever got at this point) narrative about the loss of virginity, with the line “the boy bumped into her wonderful” being a fey reference to sex. Likewise, “God moved softly and moved her body” could be an interpretation of the onset of puberty, making the song about growing up and getting laid. Regardless of whether the thread of innocence in the song implies sexuality or not — I for one think it does — there is a definite spiritual undertone throughout, a sense that God, religion, and family can provide a sanctuary from the uncertainty of the future. The girl in the story (for “Wonderful,” more than any other song on Smile, is a story) is “never known as a non-believer,” and she starts safe and contented as a child, “loving her mother and father,” but somewhere down the line in the “mystery” of the future, she loses “it all to a non-believer.” Ultimately, of course, redemption comes in the form of her parents, who still love her; she abandons the non-believing boy who stole her virginity (and maybe got her pregnant, too?) and soldiers on in spite of her troubles.

It’s a naïve and pro-establishment tune that’s very much in line with Brian’s wide-eyed optimism and Parks’ love of all things Americana, and in Brian’s hands the song is absolutely gorgeous. “Wonderful” was first recorded very early in the Smile sessions, but as the pattern went, Brian was never truly happy with it. The basic instrumental track — a simple but lovely chiming harpsichord line (played by Brian), accompanied by bass, French horn, and ukulele — was recorded on August 25, 1966, Brian’s lead vocal was recorded October 6, and the Beach Boys recorded some ultimately unused backing vocals on December 15. This first version of the song, with just Brian and the session band, is the most widely distributed on bootlegs, and it formed the basis for many later edits.

Another popular (but lesser) version has become known as the “Rock with me Henry” mix because of its low, repeating background vocals of “oh pretty baby, won’t you rock with me Henry?,” forming a sort of vocal bassline under the instrumentation, which is notably more fleshed out than in the original version. Brian also recorded an insert for the song on January 9, 1967, which is probably the “hey baba ruba” breakdown section found on the vastly inferior re-recorded Smiley Smile mix. Other than this section, which sounds like a drug-fueled party interrupting the entire flow of the song, “Wonderful” contained no rotating sections and no drastic structural shifts. In the scheme of Smile, despite Brian’s dissatisfied re-recording, “Wonderful” was a delightfully simple song sitting serenely amid the chaos. The original remains the best existing copy of the tune — the breakdown and the “Henry” vocals merely distract from what is otherwise a beautiful song — and it’s one of Smile’s many puzzles why Brian wasn’t elated by “Wonderful” from take 1.

SURF’S UP

Although problems existed right along in the Smile sessions, the point at which things truly began to fall apart was probably during the vocal sessions for a song called “Surf’s Up.” One of the finest songs from this era, “Surf’s Up” was also one of the album’s most ironic titles, nodding back to the innocent Beach Boys of old while containing some of Van Dyke Parks’ most challenging lyrics. The basic instrumental track for “Surf’s Up” was completed in one day on November 8, 1966, with a group of session musicians brought in to provide the horn section (Brian may have later recorded string arrangements in January, but no tapes have ever been heard). The horn arrangements feature a lengthy, atmospheric instrumental build-up, with the horns providing both melodic and dissonant accents to Brian’s simple piano line and the minimal percussion.

The day before the instrumental sessions (November 7), in a warm-up session with the same musicians, Brian had instructed the players to use their instruments in decidedly untraditional ways. The result was a piece which has been dubbed “George Fell Into His French Horn” by collectors, an almost eight minute document of the horn section holding conversations through their instruments and creating weird noises at Brian’s instruction. An illustration of Brian’s somewhat unusual studio methods, this session was for “sound effects,” he told the musicians, but of course none of this was actually used. The actual “Surf’s Up” instrumental sessions the next day went beautifully, yielding some of the loveliest horn charts Brian ever wrote, coupled with piano and percussion. Oddly enough, Brian went to great lengths instructing the musicians at the session to make percussive sounds like jewelry jingling, but these sounds aren’t actually heard much in the finished instrumental track.

More problematic were the vocal sessions for “Surf’s Up,” held on December 15. By this point in the sessions, it was of course obvious that Smile would not be ready in time for the proposed Christmas release, and the rest of the Beach Boys were beginning to suspect that Brian was losing it. Mike Love and the other group members had already clashed several times with Van Dyke Parks over his lyrical content, especially on “Cabinessence,” and the stream-of-consciousness poetry which Parks wrote for “Surf’s Up” proved to be a breaking point for the band.

The vocal sessions for the song completely fell apart, apparently yielding nothing usable whatsoever other than fighting between Brian, Parks, and the rest of the band. Despite the Boys’ reaction, the “Surf’s Up” lyric happens to be Parks’ finest hour, a complex web of clever wordplay and evocative imagery. However, Mike Love, long an advocate of not “fucking with the formula,” would probably not have understood (or liked) the subtle wordplay and multiple meanings contained in lines like “columnated ruins domino/ canvas the town and brush the backdrop.”

With the vocals for “Surf’s Up” unrecorded, Brian’s project had taken a massive blow. The other Beach Boys couldn’t grasp the more avant-garde aspects of the Smile project, and both Brian and Parks were quickly growing frustrated with having to explain their art to an openly hostile audience. The very same night as the failed vocal session, after sulking alone in his car smoking cigarettes, Brian performed “Surf’s Up” solo for a CBS documentary called Inside Pop, recording himself at the piano singing the tune. A few days later, Brian again performed the song solo for “Inside Pop,” this time at his own home; this was the version actually used in the film.

It is the first, late-night solo recording, however, that has formed the basis for most of the widely available versions of the song. The most often bootlegged mix of “Surf’s Up” features the instrumental intro from the November 8 session, followed by Brian’s solo piano performance of the song, with a fade on the wordless high vocalizing at the end. It’s a beautiful realization of the song, even if it’s probably not how Brian envisioned it turning out.

More well-known than this bootleg mix, however, is the version which was officially released on the Surf’s Up album in 1971. This version may actually come closer to realizing Brian’s original intentions for the song, kicking in with the November 8 instrumental used as a backing track for the first verse. The vocals for this part were newly recorded by Carl Wilson, as was a new bassline. After the first “columnated ruins domino” chorus, the song splices in Brian’s 1966 solo piano performance, with new overdubbed backing vocals by the other Beach Boys. At the end, in what appears to have been a flash of inspiration from Carl, after Brian sings “a children’s song” there is an added coda featuring new lyrics and backing vocals singing the “Child is the Father of the Man” theme. This version is gorgeous in itself, as is the bootleg mix and both solo piano readings, but it’s impossible to know what a classic this song could have been if it had come out as Brian originally intended it in early ’67. More than any other song recorded for Smile, “Surf’s Up” evokes a profound feeling of disappointment and opportunities missed.

CHILD IS THE FATHER OF THE MAN

Although “Child is the Father of the Man” earned its “official” release as part of the coda to “Surf’s Up” in 1971, Brian had different ambitions for the song in 1966. If, as many assume, “Child” was to have been a three-to-four-minute pop song on Smile, then it is one of the least-finished titles to appear on Brian’s tracklist memo. The existing recordings of the song are largely instrumental, except for some vocal overdubs of the chorus, which simply repeats the title.

However, Brian made some rough instrumental mixes of the song which indicate that, had it been completed, it would have been much longer than the two minute version that can currently be heard on bootlegs. Brian’s mixes of the backing track roughly follow a traditional verse-chorus-verse structure, which would have made the finished “Child” a conventional pop tune, rather than the slight interlude it is now. Furthermore, Van Dyke Parks confirms that he wrote lyrics for the verses, but they were never recorded — probably because of the continuing contentious relationship between Parks and the Beach Boys.

What does exist of “Child” is deceptively simple, and it’s near impossible to extract any inkling of the finished track from these half-sketches and ideas. The song’s verse sections consisted of a simple, high piano melody and some muted trumpet in the background, lasting about half a minute before leading into the chorus with a pause and a handful of bass notes. The chorus is more full-bodied and dense, even with the low recording fidelity of most existing recordings; polished up and officially released, it would doubtless be breathtaking. There’s also an extended bridge that takes off on a slightly more galloping version of the chorus melody. Brian’s rough instrumental mix had a verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus structure, and this is likely the sequence that the finished song would have followed had Brian not abandoned it.

As for the missing verse lyrics, at least one contemporary account of a Dennis Wilson solo demo of the song recalls it as “a cowboy song,” which might link it to “Heroes & Villains” and the other songs from the Americana-themed suite that some scholars believe would have taken up much of the finished album’s first side.

WIND CHIMES

After all these twists and turns and multiple takes and infighting, it’s a true pleasure to stumble across a nearly finished, relatively simple song amid all the Smile debris. “Wind Chimes” is a lovely ballad in three parts, and it was completed early in the album sessions and then left alone thereafter. The instrumental track was recorded on August 3, and the verses re-recorded on October 5; the vocals were added October 10. The song starts on a low-key note with a double-tracked vocal by Brian over a quiet melody that approximates the title chimes with vibes. This part blows up into a fuller section with a 13-musician band and backing vocals by the Beach Boys, which in turn transitions to a tinkling theme played on multiple pianos.

Curiously, though “Wind Chimes” was nearly complete in this version, and Brian was apparently content enough with it that he did no further work on it during the sessions, he re-recorded the song from scratch for Smiley Smile, where it appears in a very different form. This “official” version is almost painfully slow, the opening section featuring just a droning organ and tentative tinkles mixed low in the background behind the vocals, which are tackled by the entire group taking turns. Completely excised are the full band section and the piano fade; instead the song consists of the opening verse that was taken by Brian in the earlier version, ending with a new fade that features the lyric “when the whispering wind sends the wind chimes a-tinklin’.”

The comparison of these two versions provides some interesting insight into Brian’s thought process following the dissolution of the Smile project. When Brian left his fancy studios and went into a quickly jerry-rigged home studio, he left behind his entire previous aesthetic, and it shows in the rough production of Smiley Smile. The released “Wind Chimes” is so different from its earlier counterpart that it’s practically a different song, all its complexity and dynamics eliminated in favor of a passive — but admittedly lovely — calm. That Brian would choose to scrap the absolutely gorgeous, exciting Smile take, which was after all finished, and release this sub-par re-creation instead says a lot about his state of mind at this time, and possibly about his lack of involvement in many aspects of the Smiley Smile recording.

In the years since 1967, Brian has very seldom spoken about Smile, and until very recently has seemed unwilling to even think about that period of his life. As we can hear on the 1967 material he did release, that clean break started not long after the album sessions fell apart. The re-recordings of “Wonderful” and “Wind Chimes” completely dispensed with the extensive archive of Smile music, and “Vegetables” relegated the older material to a brief fade. In fact, of the Smile songs released on the album, only “Heroes & Villains” contained a sizable amount of older material. Of course, Brian hadn’t really been happy with most of the original mixes of these songs anyway, but it’s hard to believe that he liked the Smiley Smile versions — which sound essentially like demos — better. Rather, this was a conscious decision on Brian’s part to bury that part of his past, and he started by burying the music and alienating his fans by releasing shoddy new versions.

THE OLD MASTER PAINTER/YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE

Of all the songs on the semi-official Smile tracklist, none are more surprising than “The Old Master Painter.” Seemingly a half-realized medley, this track feels somewhat out-of-place amid the much more ambitious company of songs like “Heroes & Villains” and the various multipart suites. Why, on an album heavy with high concepts and complex structures, would Brian choose to include a song that merely pairs up the standard “The Old Master Painter” with “You Are My Sunshine?” The answer, of course, is the same as with virtually all things Smile: no one really knows.

What we do know is that the idea came from something as simple as Brian thinking it would sound great to re-do “You Are My Sunshine” with a melancholy mood. The idea was first featured in an early, unheard mix of “Heroes & Villains” that Brian erased immediately after recording it, and sometime after that he seems to have developed the short sketch into its own separate track. The song — which is barely over a minute as it exists today — featured a short instrumental take on “TOMP” before shifting into a low-key rendition of “Sunshine” with a beautifully sad lead vocal by Dennis Wilson. There also is a version without the vocal overdubs (heard on the Sea Of Tunes one-disc boot), but otherwise not much else is around. The instrumental sessions were all tracked in one day on November 14, 1966, and Dennis’ vocal was recorded just a couple of weeks later on November 30. The song would have been slightly longer as Brian originally intended, but he removed the Western-sounding fade (recorded the same day as the rest of the tune) from it and added it as a tag to the “Cantina” mix of “Heroes & Villains.”

Still, even with the tag, “TOMP/Sunshine” would have been the shortest song on Smile, probably by quite a bit. Since it’s placed last on Brian’s song list, it might’ve been considered an outro to the album, which would have had interesting consequences for the record’s flow. Certainly, it’s easy to imagine as the closer, but then we would have an album called Smile that began with a kind of church hymn and ended with an ironically depressing cover of “You Are My Sunshine.”

OTHER SMILE SONGS

In addition to the proper songs listed on the Smile tracklist that Brian sent to Capitol, the sessions yielded countless other small gems and song fragments. The various other tracks not already mentioned have often been talked about and placed in various roles on the album, but in all likelihood virtually everything that can’t be linked somehow to one of the 12 “official” songs was probably nothing more than an outtake. Considering how prolific and diverse the album sessions were, it should come as no surprise that Brian produced a lot of material that he perhaps never intended to use, but many of these scraps have proven nearly as interesting as the actual album material.

One of these fragments is a short vocal melody which was released as the first part of “She’s Goin’ Bald” on the Smiley Smile album. This segment was attempted several times during the Smile sessions, and like many of the shorter songs from this era it may have gotten its start during a “Heroes & Villains” date. Two different versions of the song exist from this era, the first featuring an early lyric about someone giving a speech (it was called “He Gives Speeches” in this incarnation), and another featuring the more familiar lyric from the Smiley Smile version. The original lyrics were written by Van Dyke Parks, and Mike Love rewrote them (typically) to be less circuitous and more narrative for the official release. The short “She’s Goin’ Bald” as recorded for Smile forms the basis for the intro to the later three-part released song — the second section is a wild, haphazard play with distorted voices speak-singing Broadway style, and the third is a nice little boogie-woogie sing-a-long with the lyrics “you’re too late, momma/ ain’t nothing upside your head.” These two later bits were recorded specifically for Smiley Smile, and the group also re-recorded the first part based on the original Smile track.

Brian recorded many short snippets like this for Smile — “Whistle In,” “You’re Welcome,” “Do a Lot,” the existing short versions of “Da-Da” and many others — and it’s really not certain what the purpose of this piece might’ve been. Van Dyke Parks, on his Song Cycle album (recorded and released after Smile collapsed), included a few similar short ditties as separate tracks, but it’s doubtful that Brian would have done anything similar. Domenic Priore would probably bring up his notion of link tracks — that the various snippets would have served as connectors between proper songs — but as with many of Priore’s speculations, this idea seems to be based more in wishful thinking and guessing than any actual evidence. As with many of these short pieces, “She’s Goin’ Bald” was probably recorded specifically for “Heroes” and abandoned when it was removed from that song.

In addition to the wealth of short song fragments written and recorded for Smile, Brian worked on a number of instrumentals for the album. The story of these songs is surprisingly complex, and made even more confusing by rampant misnaming on bootlegs, though the songs themselves are worthy of discussion regardless of the confusion.

“Look,” which has often been mislabeled as “Holidays” on bootlegs (most notably the Vigotone set), is a lovely little instrumental that conjures a lighthearted springtime mood. Or, more properly, it’s a full song for which only the instrumental part has survived. The sessions were held August 12, 1966 with an 11 musician group, under the name “Untitled Song #1.” By October 13, when the vocals were supposedly recorded, the song had been renamed “I Ran,” though a tape box for the song was labeled “Look,” which is where that came from (“Holidays” is another song altogether).

The vocals for “I Ran”/“Look” (if they ever indeed existed) have regrettably gone missing, but what remains is an absolutely gorgeous instrumental that rises and falls with a rough alteration between verse and chorus. The song starts with a plaintive piano and horns before exploding into the energetic chorus part, with an insistent rhythm on piano, bass, and drums. This is countered by another melodic section led by tinkling vibes and a flute playing the melody line. Although the tune works perfectly well as an instrumental, it does sound at times like some vocals would have been a natural addition, despite the lack of a proper verse/chorus structure.

The other part of the naming debacle is “Holidays,” which was how “I Ran” has often been labeled. In fact, “Holidays” is a totally different tune. It first surfaced on the Vigotone set, where, ironically, it was called “Tones/Tune X” (again, a different song; more to come). Like “I Ran,” this was an early Smile song that Brian cut from the running very early on and never worked on it again, though unlike the former song “Holidays” was apparently meant to be an instrumental.

The session was logged on September 8 with Van Dyke Parks in attendance, as he often was early on, apparently playing the piano part. The song starts with the should-be-famous glockenspiel part that Brian — as heard on the session tapes — seemingly spent an eternity coaxing out of the poor musician. After this, it shifts into another upbeat instrumental of the traipsing-gaily-through-meadows sort, with the glockenspiel accompanying a shivery keyboard part barely heard in the background, steady drumming, a horn section, and occasional slide whistles. Brian can be heard instructing the musicians on the sessions to “make it feel like a Dixieland thing here in the room or something,” a directive the horn players live up to with some soulful and melodic blowing. In fact, one of the striking facets of Smile is that none of its music, despite being played almost entirely by a huge cast of ever-changing session musicians, is lacking in passion or energy — a tribute, perhaps, to the quality of musicians Brian found, the inherent quality of his songs, or the deference and ambition he inspired in everyone around him. Most likely, a combination of all three.

Interestingly, although “Holidays” disappeared from the recording process very early in the Smile sessions, a part of it did surface eventually. The shimmering vibes coda that fades out at the end of the song was re-used for the “whispering winds” section that was added into “Wind Chimes” on Smiley Smile. As for “Holidays” itself, the song was discarded by Brian some time after recording it, as with probably many other songs worked on during the early Smile sessions. By November or December of 1966, Brian had a clearer idea of what he wanted to do, at least enough so that he could narrow his efforts down to the 12 songs listed on his Capitol memo, leaving behind songs like “I Ran” and “Holidays.”

Although they have never actually been heard or any tapes found bearing their marking, two of the most intriguing of the late-Smile-era recordings were called “Tones” (alternately, “Tune X”) and “I Don’t Know.” All three song titles appear on recording sessions from late in the sessions, and the identities of these mysterious songs remain unknown. For a long time, “Tones” was believed to be the instrumental now known as “Holidays,” and “Tune X” was thought to be a recording session for the tag to that song, but tape boxes have since revealed the real title of “Holidays.” The Vigotone bootleg was the first to perpetrate this error, labeling “Holidays” as “Tones/Tune X” and “Look” as “Holidays.”

The current theory regarding these mystery titles raises some much more interesting points about the late Smile period. It is known that, towards the end of the sessions, both Dennis and Carl Wilson logged studio time to record their own compositions with session musicians. By this point, it was probably quite clear that the album was not going to be completed, and these dates were a desperate attempt to salvage some workable material. Perhaps Brian had already relinquished his grand notions of a unified vision, and simply wanted to put together an album, even if it wasn’t all written by him. Thoughts of a more egalitarian Smile aside, no tapes of either Dennis’ or Carl’s contributions have ever surfaced, though it is probable that “Tones” and “Tune X” were two different working titles for Carl’s song, and “I Don’t Know” (which was recorded on January 12) was a working title for Dennis’ composition.

As if it wasn’t already obvious, the Smile sessions were pretty far removed from anything coherent or focused, and Brian himself also turned out numerous instrumentals and titles that have never surfaced. Although the June 2, 1966 date for “Inspiration” was probably just one of the final sessions for “Good Vibrations,” and not an unheard instrumental as was previously believed, many other brief snippets and sections do exist in the vaults somewhere, just waiting for collectors to find them. A piece called “Jazz” was apparently recorded at the November 29 “I Wanna Be Around/Friday Night” date, and literally dozens of similar pieces remain to taunt tape archaeologists.

Additionally, Brian went somewhat out-of-character to record covers of Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour” and Burt Bacharach’s “Little Red Book” during the late Smile period. Considering the fact that he had just a year earlier released the Beach Boys’ first album of all-original material (“Sloop John B” doesn’t count, since it wasn’t Brian’s idea to include it), the decision to record any covers for possible inclusion on Smile was probably another sign of desperation as recording on Brian’s own songs ground to a halt. If Brian ever truly had control of the recording process — which is certainly debatable — he had thoroughly lost it by the early months of 1967, and he was floundering around desperately looking for some creative direction, or at least trying to record enough material to get some product out to appease Capitol’s clamoring for an album.

AFTERWORD

So where does all this leave us? What great epiphany has been reached by sifting through the mounds of Smile detritus left lying like erstwhile sand dunes dotted across the California shore? What revelations have been revealed regarding the mystery of artistry or the nature of creativity?

To be totally frank, none.

In sum, the exploration of Smile only uncovers more mysteries and befuddling questions than it answers. Each track recorded during 1966 and 1967 is its own intriguingly twisted maze, a series of blind alleys and false endings with no resolution possible. What Brian intended for the album is totally a matter of speculation, no matter what you hear to the contrary — even the recently announced Smile concerts planned for early 2004 may not definitively set anything to rest regarding this greatest of all musical Rubic’s cubes.

The question — that’s THE question — is, did Brian even know himself what this record would have been? Or was Smile, as many have suggested, really the one that got away from even its creator? It’s possible, even likely, that Brian Wilson had simply bitten off a lot more than he could handle in 1966. Sure, there were the drugs and the label troubles and the Beatles and the Mike Love troubles and all sorts of other outside pressures acting on him, but the album itself, Smile, was its own kind of pressure.

Just a cursory look at the scattered fragments left by this album, all the half-finished songs and missing vocal parts, and the inevitable conclusion is that it’s all a confused mess. But did Smile look any different to Brian back in 1966, or did he see the same thing as we do? Looking at what he’d recorded, what he’d made, I think Brian did start to see nothing but chaos and randomness as 1966 turned into 1967. He’d once before, on “Good Vibrations,” brilliantly transformed such chaos into the best pop song ever recorded. In fact, it was that very chaos that had made “Good Vibrations” such a timeless, instantly classic track. Yet Brian probably didn’t realize just how risky it was to flirt with bedlam like that when he dove into the album-length project.

What had worked so spectacularly on the single failed to pay off with Smile largely because, among others things, Brian didn’t seem to have a clear vision of what he was striving for. At certain points, perhaps, he had a vision for individual songs (his feverish activity on the “Cantina” version of “Heroes & Villains,” for example) but his aims for the project as a whole never really coalesced. Remember, this was an album borne out of very different ambitions, a kind of mixed bag of all of Brian’s post-Pet Sounds half-baked ideas and sketches. In 1966, he was overflowing with creative energy and eager to aim high; he said as much in interviews and informal chats, always on about beating the Beatles and making the best album ever. These are not easy aspirations to shoulder for a guy who’d been catapulted to fame in a very short time, and had matured just as quickly from an overdeveloped adolescent to an intellectual, emotional wellspring of a man.This, then, is the reason for Smile’s current fractured state. It is not that time has rent the album apart and shrouded in fog the conditions of its formation. It’s telling that even many of those who were actually in the studio with Brian don’t seem able to shed any greater light on the album that today’s most assiduous after-the-fact historians. Clearly, Brian’s difficulty in articulating his ideas to others in a way that made sense — a failure that’s painfully obvious on most of the session tapes I’ve heard — was majorly culpable in preventing Smile’s release, and I believe that Brian had difficulty enlightening others because he himself was in the dark. Look at the wealth of music recorded for the album that was apparently never even intended for use: Brian was casting around for ideas, restlessly experimenting in search of something that would click with him. All his nonsensical recordings like “George Fell Into His French Horn” and the uniquely unfunny comedy sketches, all his endless re-recording of parts and shuffling of sections from song to song, was an endless quest for a very specific kind of perfection that was just outside his grasp.

What this perfection may have sounded like, of course, is anyone’s guess. Listening even to the remains of Smile that exist today, it’s not hard to imagine the album as Brian did: a spectacular testament to hope, happiness, and love cased in some of the loveliest, most original pop music ever recorded. Those are just dreams, though, imaginings of wistful fans, and it’s much more problematic trying to conform the vision of Smile we have today into the mold of what is essentially a fictional standard in ‘60s pop. The Smile we can get ahold of now is not an album in any traditional meaning of the word. There is no song list that can be considered definitive, no distinction between the outtakes and the tracks meant for the final product. Instead, we are left to sift through infinite potential albums, and the sheer conglomeration of possibility and promise held within each 30-second overdub or snippet of studio chatter is nothing short of breathtaking.

You see, if the legacy of Smile doesn’t quite live up to Brian’s (or our) grandiose goals, it is also so much more than its author or its fans could ever have hoped. Had this record been released in 1967, it’s probable that it would never have reached the legendary status it holds today. Indeed, though it’s painful to admit it, the concerns Mike Love expressed regarding much of this music were probably valid — not in an artistic sense, but in a commercial one. Despite Brian’s considerable Top 40 ambitions, it’s hard to imagine a lot of the Smile material (excepting “Heroes & Villains” and a few others) finding much of a connection with close-minded audiences, particularly in light of the similar failure of the phenomenal Pet Sounds to find that success in America, where the Boys had formerly reigned atop the charts.

With no expectations behind the music, with no hype machine or nostalgia working on the listener’s ears, stumbling across Smile today is virtually an unparalleled experience in music. Go in, as avid fans in 1966 and 1967 could not, with totally open ears, and hear for the first time some of the most amazing music ever recorded. Search through shoddy bootlegs and reissue bonus tracks, scour obscure tracklists full of naming errors and outright fakes, all in an endless quest for the moments of transcendence that make everything worthwhile.

Ed Howard

Michael Roffman’s review of Brian Wilson’s excellent new album That Lucky Old Sun. This was written Aug. 26, 2008 for the Consequence of Sound website (link below)…

 

It’s good to see Brian Wilson happy again. The ol’ ironic joke that music’s most miserable songwriter made some of the happiest tunes of all time got old. Maybe now that the decade spanning burden (e.g. 2004’s Smile) is long behind him, he can return to the soft nougat of life that bore tunes “Surfer Girl” or “I Get Around.” Even if he’s still a bit dusty on stage, Wilson is in top form, at least in comparison to the last twenty or so years. If his latest record, That Lucky Old Sun, is any indication, the best has yet to come, and the past is to be realized. Pretty optimistic from someone who last sang, “The music all is lost for now.”
Taking a glance at the album’s cheeky cover artwork, which is emblazoned with gushing oranges (the fruit, mind you) and syrupy sixties art (very reminiscent of 1967’s Wild Honey), one would be right in assuming that this record is just as it presents itself: sunny and rich. Even the song’s titles hint at this newfound optimism, for instance: “Good Kind of Love”, “Live Let Live”, and even “Forever She’ll Be My Surfer Girl.” Just the idea that Wilson has reemerged is intriguing enough for a first listen, let alone a blind buy. Altogether, the packaging, style, and titling is pitch perfect, which should come as no surprise really, especially since 2004’s Smile won all kinds of awards for its design.
Borrowing from Louis Armstrong’s 1940’s hit, the title track opens the album with signature harmonies and illustrious orchestration that is both key to Wilson and his former surfer bandmates. He slowly whines, “Show me that river, take me across/Wash all my troubles away,” before segueing right into the poppy twirl that’s “Morning Beat.” Something to consider by this track is that both the instrumentation and vocalization are enriched with delicately placed layers, a timely contribution from Wilson’s “mathematical” mind. It shouldn’t be an odd assumption either that he’s lyrically aware, throwing out tongue in cheek poetry that paints vivid pictures of Southern California, such as “Another dodger blue sky is crowning L.A./The city of angels is blessed everyday.” We’re no longer talking about something as subjective as Wilson’s demeanor; instead, it’s more accessible in the sense that the listener is taking a vague vacation that’s both endearing and timeless.
Don’t take the vacation metaphor too metaphorically, either. Wilson happens to narrate different states of his mind, all tying to California specifics, sounding more like an amused tour guide than a star crossed lover. Don’t be too worried, folks. It swings more than it stalls, and he doesn’t sound too overindulgent, which tends to emanate from spoken word narratives. In fact, most of the narratives flesh right into each song. When “Good Kind of Love” begins, it’s a natural transition. Wilson sounds benevolent here, with joyful chants (”They have the right kind of thing, right kind of thing”) and youthful excitement (”A little bit of loving and a kissing and a hugging”). This is the type of sound that brought his former band out of California and into the ears of everyone, from farmgirls in the Midwest to four British dudes in suits.
“Forever She’ll Be My Surfer Girl” is an alleged sequel to the famed radio classic, only now Wilson’s not “watch[ing] from the shore,” but having her “forever.” It’s a cute, driving ballad yet surprisingly bears similarity not to it’s counterpart, but other Beach Boys classic, “Don’t Worry Baby.” Before there’s anytime to reflect, the songwriter is discussing the various images, both good and bad, of Venice Beach, again blending with ease into the following, “Live Let Live/ That Lucky Old Sun (Reprise).” Whether intentional or not, there’s some religious connotation here, perhaps drawing parallels of the sea to the evolution of man, to which Wilson shrugs off, “Let’s get the hell outta here.” Very well, sir.
Maybe it’s the overtones, but “Mexican Girl” is a tale that probably would have worked in the sixties, only now it comes off as either overdone or forced. It might be that it’s somewhat creepy envisioning an aging Wilson oggling a Mexican woman, let alone a “girl”, but lines like “Hey bonita muchacha/Let me know that I got ya” don’t help either. Actually, it’s something one half expects Mike Love to belt out. Luckily, the sore thumb doesn’t hurt it’s following narrative, “Cinco de Mayo”, where Wilson sounds like a Combat Rock-era Joe Strummer–it’s very entertaining. “California Role/ That Lucky Old Sun (Reprise)” follows up, basked in various instruments that follow suit to a bouncy bass. There are many references thrown here (”You don’t have to climb the Capitol tower/Or play the Hollywood Bowl”), but nothing anyone with a two-bit lesson in pop culture couldn’t comprehend.
The narrative “Between Pictures” comes a bit too soon, but its charming in that he’s focusing less on the pizazz and more on those taking baby steps towards the spotlight. “Oxygen to the Brain” is a bit honest, with Wilson asking, “How could I have got so low/I’m embarrassed to tell you so,” though one wonders if he’s still second guessing his final work. It’s a sprawling song, but doesn’t tire, despite the lyrical repetition that screams to be nagging, instead coming off soothing and balmy. It’s deeper lyrical metaphors precursor what’s to come in “Midnight’s Another Day,” possibly the album’s strongest track, in which Wilson admits, “Took the dive, but couldn’t swim/A flag without the wind.” It’s bluesy without being too bluesy, and finishes out to be a magnificent piano ballad, perhaps one that Elton John wishes he could have written over the last five to ten years. Although it’s somewhat depressing, the track’s title says it all, however, and this surfer boy’s too positive for negative ill will.
Such is the case with album clincher, “Going Home.” Keeping on piano, Wilson rolls out a country-rock number that’s both classic and modern. With fuzzy bass and a scathing harmonica, Wilson commanders a killer song that could have easily closed out the album, with epic one liners like “Homesick, this son shines nowhere else.” Of course, it wouldn’t be a Wilson record if he didn’t scale back some before bowing out. That’s exactly what album closer “Southern California” does, a perfect finale for a climbing, exploratory album. Within the track, Wilson summarizes an idea he’s been trying to set in stone for years, and it’s one quick mantra, “In Southern California, dreams wake up for you/And when you wake up here, you wake up everywhere.” Needless to say, it’s a blessing he’s decided to stop hitting the snooze button.
For an artist who constantly found himself trying to outdo one project after the next, it’s clear that Wilson has broken the ol’ shell. That Lucky Old Sun might not be Smile, hell it’s not even on par with Surf’s Up, but it’s a hell of a record, and one that not only Wilson needed to make, but his fans needed to hear. Here’s proof that a tortured soul can find true happiness, and ironically, in the things that have been surrounding him his whole life. If that’s not enough of a lesson to its listeners, then they need to squint between the lines from here on out.

Michael Roffman

http://consequenceofsound.net/2008/08/26/album-review-that-lucky-old-sun/

Written for Paste Magazine on Oct. 1, 2004 – a long examination of Smile, which had finally just been released after 37 years…

What would have happened if, as planned, The Beach Boys had released the Smile album in the summer of 1967? For starters, people would have been less impressed with The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper when it came out that fall.

Don’t get me wrong: Sgt. Pepper is a great record. With its accessible tunes, it would undoubtedly have outsold Smile; the Beatles’ record, after all, is essentially a bunch of likable British music-hall numbers decked out in psychedelic garb. There are some terrific songs, but if you subtract “Within You, Without You” and “A Day In the Life,” and allow for the then novel, now commonplace arrangements, the album is 11 three-minute pop songs—not all that different from Meet The Beatles.

Smile ultimately would have had the greater impact, being something else entirely—as different from Surfin’ U.S.A. as Aaron Copland was from John Philip Sousa, as the Miles Davis and Gil Evans collaborations were from early Dixieland. Here was a rock ’n’ roll album that wasn’t just a collection of songs; it was a true suite in which one song flowed into another, in which themes were repeated and developed, in which the harmonic scope of the music justified the chamber orchestra treatment. If Smile had been released in 1967, it would have been unprecedented.

And now that it’s finally being released this fall, it still sounds unprecedented. Because no one in the 37 years since has blended rock ’n’ roll and art music as the Beach Boys’ Brain Wilson did on Smile. There have been countless rock-opera, art-rock and prog-rock projects, but most have merely dressed up mediocre rock ’n’ roll in the gowns of grandiosity. But Wilson used the moving parts and shifting textures of art music not to show off but to reflect adulthood’s mixed emotions. He used the through-line of classical composition not to replace pop’s intimacy but to reinforce it, linking one personal moment to the next.

“We wanted to make it sound like it all went together,” Wilson says today. “We wanted it to sound like a continuum, because I like it when music flows. Bach’s music did that. To do that, though, you have to have the knack for it; you have to know your classical music. My favorite was Bach, because he used simple chords and simple forms, but got such complex results. That’s what I was trying to do.”

When Wilson oversaw the first-ever public performance of Smile at London’s Royal Festival Hall this past February, you could finally hear the fluidity he sought. The piece opened with “Our Prayer,” a gorgeous, wordless, a cappella hymn. It had the moving counterpoint parts of a Bach cantata, but it also had roots in the wide-open vowels of ’50s doo-wop, which Wilson underlined by segueing into The Crows’ 1954 hit, “Gee.” With the smack of a snare drum, “Gee” moved into “Heroes and Villains,” the Beach Boys’ 1967 Top-15 single. The verses, with their dizzying descending line set against a rising chord progression, were sung to the original lyrics and then repeated with even more dizzying scat variations. The theme of American heroes and villains was further refined in the “Cantina” section, which had been edited out of the original single and the version on Smiley Smile.

This circled back to “Heroes and Villains,” which slid into “Do You Like Worms” and “Cabinessence,” a series of American snapshots from the Caribbean isles to Plymouth Rock, from the cabin on the hill to the first trains on the Western plains. Tying them all together were snatches of “Home On the Range,” “You Are My Sunshine” and the chorus melody from “Heroes and Villains.” This section gave the impression of flying low over the entire American continent.

Then it was back to earth for the lovely romantic ballad, “Wonderful,” which bloomed into “Child Is Father to the Man,” heard for the first time with its verse lyrics. This melted into “Surf’s Up,” the world-weary lament of a grown-up surfer who finds himself “heart hardened—a broken man too tough to cry.” He longs for a lost innocence and finds its echo in a reprise of “Child Is Father to the Man.”

It was more than 19 minutes of continuous music, tightly woven together, and it was only half of Smile. Still to come was a second movement featuring “Vega-Tables,” “Wind Chimes,” “Cool, Cool Water,” “Good Vibrations,” Frank Sinatra’s “I Wanna Be Around” and the return of several motifs from the first movement.

The Smile CD being released this fall is a studio re-creation of those London shows. Due to the long history of litigation between Wilson, his fellow Beach Boys and Capitol Records, none of the original recordings were used for this version. But those original tracks were closely consulted by Wilson, Smile lyricist Van Dyke Parks and Wilson’s music director, Darian Sahanaja, as they constructed first the live version and then the studio version.

“I was amazed when I finally heard it,” Wilson admits. “It brought back a lot of memories. It sounded the way I anticipated it would when I first wrote it. We wrote a bit of new music because we didn’t think it was complete. We wanted to make it a little bit longer. People call it a rock symphony, but it’s more a cantata, a rock cantata.”

Wilson, now 62, talks in truncated sentences, in bursts of child-like enthusiasm. He’s wary of attempts at musical analysis, but he does acknowledge a sense of relief that Smile has finally been finished.

For 37 years, it’s been the most famous unreleased album in rock ’n’ roll history, the subject of countless books, articles and websites (there are still sites where you can “Make your own Smile album” from the bits and pieces that have leaked out on bootlegs and Beach Boys reissues). It’s been a painful reminder that he never completed his greatest work and instead entered a dark period of drugs, family squabbles and mental instability.

Parks, 61, has also been haunted by the ghosts of the unfinished album. “For so long,” he says, “this project brought me nothing but humiliation. It was the first question people always asked—‘How come Smile never came out?’ It brought me little money; it didn’t pay my kids’ tuition. After living the life of Job that this project gave me, I was so relieved when I heard it in London. I was so grateful that everything sounded acceptable and even had a certain charm. Something wonderful had happened back then in our state of youthful enthusiasm.”

It’s hard to remember how fast pop music was changing in the mid-’60s. Less than two years separate The Beatles’ first appearance on the U.S. charts with “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” in January 1964 from such mature works as “Yesterday,” “Day Tripper” and the Rubber Soul album by the end of 1965. In the same period, Bob Dylan had gone from acoustic protest songs such as “The Times They Are A-Changin’” to the folk-rock epic “Like a Rolling Stone.” Keeping pace with them was Brian Wilson.

“Rubber Soul blew my mind,” Wilson remembers. “I liked the way it all went together, the way it was all one thing. It was a challenge to me to do something similar. That made me want to make Pet Sounds. … I didn’t want to do the same kind of music, but on the same level. Smile. wasn’t the same kind of thing; it wasn’t anything like The Beatles. It wasn’t pop music; it was something more advanced.”

It was more advanced in that it tried to move rock ’n’ roll beyond the bounds of the three-to-five-minute song. Dylan was doing something similar with lyrics, but Wilson didn’t want to merely add more verses to the same song. He wanted to link different musical passages in a chain, much as Duke Ellington and George Gershwin had done with jazz and Tin Pan Alley in the 1930s.

Wilson wasn’t interested in merely adding string charts to rock songs; he wanted to create a musical through line so a mood or a chord progression could develop beyond the standard verse-chorus-bridge format. After all, if life didn’t always have a simple beginning, middle and end, why should music? Pet Sounds was a step in the right direction, but it was still a collection of discrete songs. The next step was a true suite.

When he first heard Pet Sounds, Paul McCartney once told a reporter, “I just thought, ‘Oh, dear me. This is the album of all-time. What are we gonna do?’” One thing he did was write “Here, There and Everywhere” as a direct response to The Beach Boys’ album. That song appeared on The Beatles’ Revolver album, which raised the ante for The Beach Boys’ next effort. Wilson’s first response was “Good Vibrations,” a number-one single that was also a landmark in studio techniques.

The late Carl Wilson, Brian’s kid brother and closest partner in The Beach Boys, explained those sessions to me in a 1982 interview: “‘Good Vibrations’ has a lot of texture on it, because we did so many overdubs. We’d double or triple or quadruple the exact same part, so it would sound like 20 voices. There’s a phase in your voice, and even if you try to sing it exactly the same, it’s not exactly the same and more overtones and harmonics come out. It has a choral sound, a choir effect.

“We recorded some bridge sections at Western, went back to Gold Star and tried some verses there and did some choruses at Sunset Sound. Each studio had a good sound for a different thing. In the end, he’d use the section that sounded best; it didn’t matter where it was recorded. It was pretty daring back then to take a chance and record a section and see if it would fit with another. But instead of making it more bulging and more raucous as Phil Spector might have, Brian refined it.”

“Brian was on his own free-thinking path at the time,” notes Sahanaja. “He would get all the musicians together and work variations on a groove or a riff or a melodic fragment. It’s what I call modular recording. For ‘Good Vibrations’ he did 28 variations on the verse and 37 variations on the chorus. Then he picked and chose the best bits to make one single. That was a great success, so he decided to make a whole album that way.”

That album was Smile. Wilson had a concept for the lyrics but, as in so many areas, he was insecure about his abilities as a wordsmith. Just as he’d recruited a young L.A. ad man named Tony Asher to write the lyrics for Pet Sounds, so he recruited a young L.A. session musician named Van Dyke Parks to write the lyrics for Smile.

Born in Mississippi and schooled in Pennsylvania, Parks had migrated to California at the end of 1962 to play in the same folk coffeehouses as David Crosby, Jim McGuinn and Jackson Browne. When folk-rock supplanted folk, Parks put away his acoustic guitar and used his schooling in jazz and classical music to become one of the top keyboardists and arrangers on the progressive-rock scene.

“There was a tremendous urgency in the air at that time,” Parks remembers. “Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement forced everyone to make a decision: Either you were happy to remain in the Eisenhower era or you were willing to plunge ahead into the space age. Music was changing, responding to Dylan and The Beatles. When folk music went electric, a music industry developed out here [in L.A.] with people who thought that lyrics and music had other purposes than simply entertainment.”

Parks was playing a lot of sessions with Terry Melcher, who was producing records for everyone from Paul Revere & the Raiders to The Byrds. Melcher, an old surf-music colleague, had spoken to Wilson about Parks’ lyrics. One day, Parks was visiting Melcher when Wilson happened by and off-handedly invited Parks to write some lyrics for him. Out of such chance meetings, history is born.

“I didn’t know much about The Beach Boys,” Parks admits, “but I liked anything with imaginative chords and melodies—I liked Lou Christie and The Four Seasons. I wasn’t so interested in the topics of The Beach Boys’ songs—I never celebrated sexual conquest, and fast cars were just a means of getting some place—but Brian was obviously interested in getting beyond those topics.

“On the other hand, I wasn’t joining the counter-culture whole hog. The counter-culture had no respect for America, because so many shameful things were being done in its name—there’s a parallel to our own time. I did not believe the lyrics should be oblivious to that, but should respond with a guarded optimism. I thought the lyrics should confirm something of the American Dream and not just dump on it.

“The first thing we did was we knocked off ‘Heroes and Villains’ in one day,” Parks continues. “Brian sang the melody, and it sounded like Marty Robbins to me, so I wrote about the American West. I made it a policy not to change one note of the melody, because each stone in the melody is essential to the architecture. Melody is feeling, and feelings are important; they speak even to the comatose.”

Some of Parks’ lyrics crossed the line into artsy pretension, but they boasted so many aphorisms, puns and sly rhymes that they recovered from every stumble. He evokes the allure of the open frontier with lines like, “Nestle in a kiss below there; the constellations ebb and flow there and witness our home on the range.” He conjures up a schoolyard romance with this image, “Through the recess, the chalk and numbers, a boy bumped into his wonderful.”

“I thought Van Dyke was a genius,” Wilson says today. “We wanted to capture the mood of early Americana, Plymouth Rock and all that. Van Dyke had a lot of knowledge about America. I gave him hardly any direction. We wanted to get back to basics and try something simple. We wanted to capture something as basic as the mood of water and fire.”

Parks claims that Wilson has a “cartoon consciousness,” and he means that in the most admiring way. It’s no great trick, he says, to make complex art out of complex subjects; all you have to do is hold up a mirror. Anyone can tack pops-orchestra charts onto songs about “Topographic Oceans” or “Brain Salad Surgery”; the trick is to reveal the complexity in things as simple as “Vega-Tables” or “Wind Chimes.” Wilson, Parks argues, made music that was as easy to grasp as a cartoon and yet rewarded repeated listening as much as Bach.

“My friend Lowell George [of Little Feat] once described it as smart/dumb,” Parks adds, “smart and dumb at the same time. Just as the best comic books can turn cliché into high art, so can the best pop music. Brian does that. He can take common or hackneyed material and raise it from a low place to the highest, and he can do it with an economy of imagery that speaks to the casual observer—bam! It’s no coincidence that he was working at the same time that Warhol and Lichtenstein were doing pop art.”

It wasn’t just the writing that made Smile so special; it was the arranging as well. Parks didn’t write any of the music, but he did collaborate on the arrangements, encouraging Wilson to extend the experiments of Pet Sounds. Instead of the usual trap drums, much of the percussion was tympani, marimba and vibes. Instead of the usual guitars, much of the texture came from cello, banjo and woodwinds. But these instruments weren’t used for artsy ostentation; often, a brass section might seem to erupt into animated conversation or laughter.

“We used different percussion because we didn’t want it to sound too boomy,” Wilson reveals. “We wanted it to sound more delicate. I didn’t want it to sound too rock ’n’ roll. I thought it would be original to use a cello in rock ’n’ roll. It gave me other colors to work with. I heard the instruments in my head as I wrote the music. And it’s important to use humor so people don’t get bored, so they won’t be bothered by it.”

The songwriting for Smile (originally and revealingly titled Dumb Angel) was largely done between July and September 1966. Recording began in September, and Capitol printed album covers (with Frank Holmes’ illustration of a small-town shop that sold smiles in its front window) for an announced January release.

But the sessions dragged on through March. Increasing drug use destabilized Wilson’s always shaky confidence, a confidence that was further frayed when Beach Boy Mike Love openly resisted the surreal lyrics and avant-garde music of the album. After one especially heated argument, Parks resigned from the project, and Brian Wilson abandoned it shortly thereafter.

“It all came as a big surprise to me when my music was doubted,” Parks says today, “because I was doing my best to support Brian’s work. Fame and fortune had nothing to do with it; I just wanted to be involved, because this guy was the shit.

“I will say, though, that I knew Brian was headed for disaster, psychological collapse. A lot of that had to do with drug experimentation. Though I had done my fair share, I wasn’t interested in getting into a tent with Brian to do psychedelics. I didn’t want to be involved in anything that would incapacitate him. I was also intimidated by Mike Love; I was physically afraid of him, because Brian had confided to me what Mike had done to him.”

“Because I was on drugs,” Wilson concedes, “I couldn’t concentrate, and this music requires a lot of concentration. If we had released it then, I don’t think it would have sold one copy; I don’t think anyone would have liked it, because it sounded like it was from another planet.”

“Brian just couldn’t thread it all together,” Carl Wilson maintained in 1982. “It takes a lot of concentration to stay on top of a project like that, and everybody was so loaded on pot and hash all the time, that it’s no wonder it didn’t get done. He was getting fragmented; he was starting to have difficulty completing things. And it was also a thing, what if it didn’t turn out to be great, what if it had totally flopped? That would have completely destroyed him. We would have lost him forever.

“So in the middle of all this, Brian just said, ‘I can’t do this. We’re going to make a homespun version of it instead. We’re just going to take it easy. I’ll get in the pool and sing. Or let’s go in the gym and do our parts.’ That was Smiley Smile. A lot of Smile songs were on Smiley Smile, but they didn’t sound the same at all. The melodies were similar, but the versions were more laid back. Maybe we’d do the melody, but nothing would be there of the original production. I’ve always said Smiley Smile was the bunt, and Smile was the home run.”

If you can hear Smiley Smile apart from the expectations for Smile, it’s a lovely, charming record. It’s not the groundbreaking artistic milestone Smile would have been, but its pleasures are genuine, as are the pleasures of its stripped-down R&B follow-up, Wild Honey. Brian Wilson oversaw both those albums, but his involvement in The Beach Boys gradually lessened, and he never attempted anything as ambitious as Smile again. He refused to talk about Smile in interviews and had to be coaxed into releasing some of the tracks on 1993’s Good Vibrations box set. But even as he hid from the world and from his own music, a whole new generation was discovering his songs. The multi-platinum success of the 1974 compilation, Endless Summer, and the 1975 sequel, Spirit of America, seduced a new legion of fans, and the more adventuresome sought out the original Pet Sounds and Smiley Smile albums and eventually the Smile bootlegs. Two of them were Darian Sahanaja and Nick Walusko, two singer/guitarists so inspired by Wilson’s music that they formed their own band, The Wondermints.

“Within five minutes of meeting Nick, Brian Wilson’s name came up,” Sahanaja confesses with a chuckle. “At one point, I got a home silkscreen kit, so I printed up T-shirts of the Smile album cover. One day someone saw me in the shirt, and said, ‘I know someone who would die for that shirt.’ It was Probyn Gregory, who ended up playing for The Wondermints. Nick, he and I are all in Brian’s band now. We’ll be standing on stage playing something like ‘God Only Knows,’ and I’ll look at the other guys and go, ‘Wow. After imagining this so often, it’s actually happening.’”

The Wondermints have recorded four delightful albums of their own, but when they heard Brian Wilson was organizing his first-ever solo tour after releasing his second-ever solo album, 1998’s Imagination, The Wondermints couldn’t resist the temptation to audition.

“We didn’t know if Brian could handle it. …” Sahanaja admits. “He was known for showing up at Beach Boys shows, sitting off to one side and playing one song while they were playing another. They’d trundle him up there like a dancing bear. That’s not what I wanted, and I didn’t want to just run through the hits either, though that’s what some people wanted. To me, if you come to a Brian Wilson show, it should be a portrait of the composer and his music. It was all about getting the music right.

“The first few shows, I was afraid he was going to bolt off stage after each song. But he made it through the first show, then the second show, then five shows, then 10 shows. I think he was startled by people showing such appreciation for the music. It’s incredible to think he has never felt that love from an audience.”

Those early tours were documented on the 2000 album, Live at the Roxy Theatre. Once Wilson got comfortable with touring and was convinced that audiences really wanted to hear more than just the hits, the idea was developed to perform in sequence the entire Pet Sounds album for the show’s second set. In some cities, an orchestra joined The Wondermints and the rest of Wilson’s band for this segment. That tour was documented on the 2002 album, Pet Sounds Live.

Once they’d done Pet Sounds, everyone was asking, “What could possibly top this?” As soon as the question was posed, the answer was obvious: Smile. But how could you perform an album that had never been finished, that Wilson refused to even talk about?

“We were already doing ‘Heroes and Villains,’ ‘Good Vibrations’ and a medley of ‘Wonderful’ into ‘Cabinessence,’” Sahanaja points out, “which are some of the more ambitious songs from the album. So I thought maybe we could do a set of Smile music. But to do that, you’d have to go back and assemble the music from a lot of pieces and fragments. And to do that, you’d have to have Brian leading the way.

“But when we started, Brian didn’t want to do it at all. He was terrified by Smile. It’s pretty well documented how he associates this music with all of his failure. Smile was the moment when he started to check out; when it fractured and he lost his support system. He’s had to live with the what-if for 40 years, with everyone saying, ‘Oh, the great Beach Boys albums that could have influenced The Beatles and caused them to make different Beatles albums.’

“When I first met Brian,” Sahanaja continues, “you couldn’t even mention the words ‘Heroes and Villains’; he’d turn around and walk away or he’d say, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ Once we were in New York, and a good friend of Brian came over and said, ‘Will you play “Heroes and Villains”?’ He said, ‘No,’ but they begged him, and he got into it and suddenly everyone was crowding around the piano and it made a new association for him. When we put it in the show, it became a standout in the set. Soon Brian loved the song; it went to being his favorite part of the show.

“Touring with him for six years, you learn that what’s most important is the music at that moment. If the music is sounding really good at that moment, it can override any associations or objections he might have. It becomes music again. Last year I was playing ‘’Til I Die’ on vibes for the Carl benefit. Brian came over and he said, ‘That’s great. Good memories.’ I’m thinking, ‘Good memories? He wrote this during the darkest period of his life.’ I asked him and he said, ‘Yeah, it reminds me of our first tour.’ He’s made a new connection with it.”

The first thing Sahanaja did was dig into the Beach Boys vault and pull out every piece of tape relevant to the Smile project. He transferred everything to his iBook hard drive. He then carried the iBook up to Wilson’s house and played all the songs and scraps.

“I sat down with him and said, ‘Brian, you have to listen to the music.’ I put my hand on his knee and said, ‘Brian, we’re not trying to finish the album; we’re trying to put it together in a way that flows, that has some cohesion as a live performance.’ When he heard it that way, he was more agreeable. It was scary for me, because I’m sure it was the first time he had been forced to listen to this music in many years. But we were listening to a piece of music and he said, ‘How will we do that on stage?’ I said, ‘We’ll do this on clarinet and that on vibes,’ and he said, ‘Really? Wow.’ Then he got into it.”

One day they were working on the song, “Do You Like Worms,” and Sahanaja, who felt it sounded incomplete, asked Wilson if there were parts that weren’t on the tapes. Immediately, Wilson started singing a 37-year-old melody and then taught Sahanaja a 37-year-old harmony part. Through all the drugs and mental breakdowns, his grasp of the music had never faltered. Sahanaja asked about the lyrics that went with the new melody, and Wilson went to the phone and punched in Van Dyke Parks’ phone number, a number he hadn’t used in years.

Parks showed up the next day, and for most of October and November of last year, the three men worked on solving the riddle that Smile had become. Parks wrote a few new lyrics to fill in gaps and to complete the segues; Wilson negotiated the transitions from one passage to another. Gradually it fell into place.

“It was like a puzzle,” Sahanaja explains; “you finish this corner, and then you see where the next piece fits. My role was to suggest how it might work onstage; maybe we could slow down this song, change the key and segue it into the next song. I’d go home after a meeting session like that and I’d record those ideas and bring it back to them the next day in a tangible form so they could hear it and so we could all critique it. Meanwhile, Brian would sing the melody, and Van Dyke would have the lyrics to go with the melody. I’d ask if a line was part of the original idea, and all he’d say was, ‘It was inevitable.’

“Brian would hear something and go, ‘What is that sound?’ Van Dyke would say, ‘That’s a lap steel combined with a vocal.’,” Sahanaja explains. “That’s when I realized that Smile was a true collaboration, that they had both helped with each other’s realm, because I was seeing it happening again last fall. Brian’s chord and melody ideas were left intact; even the connecting material was taken from pieces recorded in 1966. That was important to me, that every piece of music be of that sensibility. I have a strong radar for that stuff. If something modern sticks out; that has to go.”

The high spirits of the fall, though, gave way to Christmas depression and renewed doubts about the whole project. When rehearsals resumed in January, Wilson was ready to abandon Smile once again. He had to be coaxed through rehearsals. And when it finally came time to debut the Smile suite at London’s Royal Festival Hall, Wilson still wasn’t sure he could do it.

“After the first show,” Sahanaja recounts, “he was rocking back and forth. He looked up at me and said, ‘We did it; we got through Smile.’ What he really meant was he got through it and the sky didn’t fall down. Van Dyke came backstage, and tears were streaming down his face and he hugged Brian. It was a real relief for him, too.

“The second night, Brian had already scaled the mountain and was able to look into the valley and actually think, ‘Check this music out; isn’t this cool?’ That ovation we got the second night was really touching. The audience would just not stop. Brian had this look on his face, a look I hadn’t seen since Ronnie Spector sang a bunch of Ronettes songs for him in New York for his birthday, a look like, ‘This is so good it’s scary, so good that I can’t leave.’”

After the success of the live shows in London, it seemed foolhardy not to record a studio version. Wilson had confronted his ghosts from the past and was finally feeling good about the Smile suite. Moreover, he had 18 musicians and singers (including Sahanaja, Walusko, Gregory, falsetto specialist Jeffrey Foskett, vibist Scott Bennett and the Stockholm Strings & Brass) who knew the material cold.

“We did it backwards,” Sahanaja admits. “Most people establish a studio version of the music and then go out and perform it live and maybe strip it down and pump it up a bit to connect with the audience. But we figured, ‘We know the songs. Why not go back and cut each piece in sections in the studio, the way Brian originally did with ‘Good Vibrations,’ and then assemble the pieces?’ So that’s what we did.”

Smile remains the pinnacle of Wilson’s career, but it’s not his only music that has gone unrealized for a long time. There’s a batch of post-Smile songs (“Can’t Wait Too Long,” “With Me Tonight,” “You’re Welcome,” “’Til I Die”) that deserve a Smile-like treatment. There’s the unreleased 1971 album, Landlocked, the 1977 orchestral sessions with Dick Reynolds, the unreleased 1991 album, Sweet Insanity, and the 1996 Andy Paley sessions. Much of this has leaked out in dribs and drabs; some of it is inferior work, but some of it is terrific music that deserves a better presentation.

Earlier this year Wilson released his third official studio solo album, Gettin’ In Over My Head. Much of the publicity concerned his collaborations with Elton John, Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney, but these have the stilted quality of a marketing ploy. The real gems on the disc are a new collaboration by Wilson and Parks, “The Waltz,” and four songs rescued from the Paley sessions.

Paley—who has a reputation for working with difficult artists, including Jonathan Richman and Jerry Lee Lewis—coaxed Wilson into creating the eight-minute, Smile-like “Rio Grande” on his first solo album and oversaw his best studio work of the ’90s. Unfortunately, none of the later songs were released until this year and then only in watered-down versions. Still unreleased is Wilson’s last collaboration with The Beach Boys, “She’s Still a Mystery”; a Phil Spector-ized version of “Proud Mary”; the roaring rocker “I’m Broke”; and the nakedly autobiographical “It’s Not Easy Being Me.” Perhaps Sahanaja can next turn his attention to these tracks.

One of the Paley songs that does appear on Gettin’ In Over My Head is the hook-laden “Soul Searchin’,” featuring a lead vocal recorded by Carl Wilson a year or so before he died of brain cancer in 1998. It’s a reminder that no matter how dysfunctional The Beach Boys were, they were all great singers. The group was the perfect vehicle for Brian Wilson’s songwriting, and no matter how faithfully Smile has been recreated over the past year, it will never sound like it would have with those great voices at its service—especially the way they sounded in 1966.

“Carl was a great singer,” Brian acknowledges. “I liked writing music for him because he sang really good for me. They were all great singers, and that made it easier to write for them. I knew they could do anything I wrote. And they did. I had to teach them how to sing on pitch. I did it one guy at a time, teaching them parts. I don’t talk to The Beach Boys now. We just stopped talking about six years ago, after my brothers died.”

Geoffrey Himes