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Brian Wilson Presents Smile

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Smile, which for many years was perhaps the most famous unreleased rock and roll album of all time (sometimes spelled with the idiosyncratic partial capitalization SMiLE, derived from the lettering on the original cover), was intended by its creator Brian Wilson as the follow up to The Beach Boys' influential album Pet Sounds (1966), but was never completed in its original form. In an event unique in popular music history, the project was resurrected in 2003 and a newly recorded version was released by Beach Boys composer and leader Wilson in 2004. During the 37 years since its cancellation, Smile had acquired a considerable mystique, and bootlegged tracks from the never-completed album circulated widely among Beach Boys collectors. Many of the tracks that were originally recorded for Smile were eventually placed on subsequent albums.

The conception of Smile

On 17 February 1966, mid-way through the sessions for Pet Sounds, Brian Wilson started work on a new song, based on a statement by his mother, Audree Wilson, that dogs could feel "vibrations" from people. The result became the Beach Boys' biggest ever hit, the single "Good Vibrations", which went to #1 in both Britain and the USA. The most expensive and complex pop recording made up to that time, it still stands as a milestone in recording history.

In an interview, Brian Wilson dubbed the work "a teenage symphony to God". His plan was to take his work on Pet Sounds to a new level, with an album-length suite of specially-written songs that were both thematically and musically linked, and which would be recorded using the unusual sounds and innovative production techniques that had made "Good Vibrations" so successful.

File:Beachboys smile cover.jpg
Frank Holmes' original 1966 cover artwork for Smile

Crucial to the inception of Smile was Wilson's collaboration with singer, musician, composer and lyricist Van Dyke Parks, whom Wilson invited to write lyrics for the new album in spring 1966; at that time the project was still provisionally titled Dumb Angel. The two quickly formed a close and fruitful working relationship and between April and September of 1966 they co-wrote a number of major songs including "Surf's Up", "Heroes And Villains", "Wonderful", "Cabin Essence," and "Wind Chimes", all of which were written in the famous sandbox that Brian had installed in his home. Their first collaboration was "Heroes And Villains", and it is reported that when Wilson played the song's descending melody line to him, Parks devised the opening line on the spot. Their most acclaimed song, "Surf's Up", was written in a single night.

Pet Sounds lyricist Tony Asher wrote the original lyrics for "Good Vibrations". The hit version released in October 1966 featured a new set of lyrics co-written by Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys' Mike Love. Wilson had in fact asked Parks to write new lyrics for "Good Vibrations", but Parks declined, preferring not to come in on a project that was already underway—although he did reportedly make one very significant contribution to the arrangement, suggesting the addition of the cellos in the chorus. (Other people have been credited with this suggestion, including Carl Wilson).

Although the precise nature of its original conception is still hotly debated, several key features of Smile are generally acknowledged. Both musically and lyrically, Wilson and Parks intended Smile to be explicitly American in style and subject, a direct reaction to the British dominance of popular music at the time. It was supposedly conceived as a musical journey across America from east to west, beginning at Plymouth Rock and ending in Hawaii, as well as traversing some of the great themes of American history and culture, including the impact of white settlement on native Americans, the influence of the Spanish, the Wild West, and the opening up of the country by railroad and motorway.

As the name implies, humour was a key ingredient, and the Smile songs are replete with wordplay, puns and multiple meanings. A good example is "Vega-Tables", which includes the lines "I'm gonna do well, my vegetables, cart off and sell my vegetables"— the phrase "...cart off and..." is a clever bilingual pun on the word Kartoffeln, which is German for potatoes. At one stage Wilson apparently toyed with the idea of expanding Smile to include an additional 'humour' record, and a number of recordings were made in this vein, although they were apparently not successful, so the idea was dropped. One of the possible remnants of this aspect of the project is the track "She's Goin' Bald", which was recorded after the main SMiLE sessions and included on Smiley Smile.

Wilson is known to have been deeply influenced by the music of George Gershwin at an early age (especially Rhapsody In Blue), and Smile contains echoes of Gershwin's emphatic American-ness, and the episodic and programmatic characteristics of the composer's works. A short scene featuring Brian at the piano in the recent documentary on the making of Smile suggests that Brian may have directly based the main riff of Heroes and Villains on a variation or inversion of a fragment of Rhapsody in Blue.

Smile also drew heavily on American popular music of the past; Wilson's innovative original compositions were interwoven with snippets of significant songs of yesteryear, including "The Old Master Painter" (made famous by Peggy Lee), the perennial "You Are My Sunshine", Johnny Mercer's jazz standard "I Wanna Be Around" (recorded by Tony Bennett) and the song "Gee" by noted '50s doo-wop group The Crows, as well as quotations from other pop-culture reference points, such as the Woody Woodpecker theme.

Smile's cut-up structure was certainly unique for its time in mainstream popular music, and it indicates that Brian was familiar with the techniques of musique concrète and the use of chance operations in making art—an approach which, according to musicologist Ian MacDonald, was also exerting a strong influence on The Beatles at this time.

Wilson's experiments with LSD were undoubtedly a significant influence on the texture and structure of the work, and one of the strongest intellectual influences on his thinking at this time was his friend Loren Schwartz, who is said to have introduced Brian to both marijuana and LSD.

Writer Bill Tobelman suggests that Smile is filled with coded references to Brian's life and his recent LSD experiences, and that it was heavily influenced by his interest in Zen philosophy—especially the way that Zen teaching uses absurd humour and the paradoxical riddle, the koan, to liberate the mind from preconceptions—and that Smile as a whole can be interpreted as an extended Zen koan. Tobelman notes that Wilson's autobiography recounts an acid flashback which Wilson interprets as a Zen riddle, and suggests that this experience largely serves as a template for Smile.

Studio techniques

Brian Wilson developed his "classic" production method over several years, bringing it to a high degree of perfection with the recording of Pet Sounds during 1965 and 1966. With "Good Vibrations" Wilson began to experiment with radical editing of his work. Now, instead of taping each backing track as a complete performance, as had been the case for all prior Beach Boys recordings, he began to break the arrangements into sections, recording multiple 'takes' of each section. He also recorded the same section at several different studios, to exploit the unique sonic characteristics or special effects available in each. He would then edit these different segments together to create a composite whole that combined the best features of production and performance.

Wilson extended this "modular" approach for the songs on Smile. Working mainly at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles (Phil Spector's favorite studio), Wilson began a long and complex series of sessions in late 1966 that continued until early 1967. He also frequently used Sunset Sound Studios and United Western Recorders on Sunset Boulevard, and Capitol's own renowned in-house studio.

Much of Smile was recorded in this piecemeal manner; each of the finished tracks is a heavily-edited composite recording and many of the unreleased Smile fragments are alternate versions of backing tracks, alternate sections of these tracks, or passages intended to provide transitions between tracks.

In spite of the availability of stereo recording, Wilson always made his final mixes in mono (as did rival producer Spector). He did so for several reasons—he personally felt that mono mixing provided more sonic control over what the listener heard, minimising the vagaries of speaker placement and sound system quality. It was also motivated by the knowledge that pop radio broadcast in mono, and most domestic and car radios and record players were monophonic. Another, more personal reason for Wilson's preference was that he is deaf in one ear.

The Recordings

Recording for the new LP began in August 1966 with the project had been officially named Smile and sessions for the new album began in earnest, and continued until mid-December.

In early December Brian Wilson gave Capitol Records a handwritten list of twelve tracks planned for Smile, for use on the LP back cover. This list is obviously crucial evidence of Wilson's intentions for the piece, but, since the track listing (as printed) carried the standard advisory "see label for correct playing order", it can only be taken as confirming Brian's choice of songs at that time, and not their exact sequence.

Capitol began production on a lavish gatefold cover with a 12-page booklet. Cover artwork was commissioned from Frank Holmes, a friend of Van Dyke Parks, and colour photographs of the group were taken by Guy Webster. 466,000 covers and 419,000 booklets were printed by early January; promotional materials were sent to record distributors and dealers and ads were placed in Billboard and teenage magazines including Teen Set.

Some time in December, Brian informed Capitol that Smile would not be ready that month, but he advised that he would deliver it "prior to 15 January". Wilson's conception of the work evidently changed around this time, possibly as a result of pressure from within the band. Early in 1967 work was halted on all the Smile tracks except for "Heroes And Villains" and "Vega-Tables".

"Heroes and Villains"

Main article: Heroes and Villains

Capitol records scheduled 13 January 1967 as the release date for the next single, "Heroes And Villains".

Although renowned for his efficiency in the studio, Brian clearly struggled for several months to complete "Heroes And Villains", but despite more than twenty sessions between October 1966 and March 1967, he was unable to complete it to his satisfaction.

"Heroes & Villains" was a semi-autobiographical piece couched as a Wild West fantasy and featured some of Parks's most intriguing lyrics. It is arguably the keystone for the musical structure of almost all the songs on the album, and like "Good Vibrations" it was edited together from several discrete sections.

Like most of the Smile songs, "Heroes And Villains" is based around a deceptively simple three-chord pattern. It encapsulates Wilson's musical approach for the project, which was to create songs that were (for the most part) structurally very simple but which were overlaid with extremely complex and often highly chromatic vocal and instrumental arrangements, and capped by Parks' remarkable lyrics.

The considerable time and effort that Wilson devoted to "Heroes And Villains" is indicative of its importance, both as a single and as part of Smile—sessions for the various versions and sections extended over more than a year, from May 1966 to July 1967. It now appears that the song underwent many changes during its production and that several important elements, including the so-called "Cantina scene" and the segment commonly known as "Bicycle Rider" were taken out of the finished single and album versions, although they were included in other unreleased mixes. A single version of the song was released in mid-1967, but rumours persist of a far longer edit, and it is known that several alternate versions were put together. Both Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys frequently included "Bicycle Rider" when performing the song in concert.

"Surf's Up"

"Surf's Up" was written in a single night. It was certainly fully composed by November 1966, when Brian Wilson was filmed performing the song on piano for a CBS News special on popular music, hosted by Leonard Bernstein. An apparently complete backing track for the first (2:20) section was recorded and mixed in November 1966, but vocals and other overdubs were still to be added, and work on the middle and closing sections was either never undertaken, or never finished. It is notable that the flourishes played on muted trumpet in the verses of "Surf's Up" are almost identical to the familiar 'laughing' refrain of the theme for the cartoon series Woody Woodpecker. This musical reference recurs in the instrumental piece "Fall Breaks And Back To Winter" on the album Smiley Smile, (which was in fact subtitled "Woody Woodpecker Symphony").

A full-length version of "Surf's Up" was eventually assembled by Carl Wilson and released on the 1971 Surf's Up LP.

The project collapses

According to most sources, Brian Wilson began to encounter serious problems with Smile around late November 1966. He was by then beginning to exhibit early signs of depression and paranoia and it is reported that during the recording session for the "Fire" section of the "Elements Suite" on 28 November he became irrationally concerned that the music was responsible for starting several fires in the neighborhood of the studio. For many years it was rumored that Wilson had tried to burn the tapes of this session, but this is not true, although he did abandon the "Fire" piece for good. No recording of anything but the introduction to the original "Fire" tapes has been released, nor is it likely to be. It has also been noted in several accounts that Parks deliberately stayed away from the session (during which Wilson encouraged the musicians to wear toy firemen's hats) and that he later described Wilson's behavior as "regressive".

Wilson's mental deterioration and eventual breakdown was the result of a complex web of causes. As Beach Boys chronicler Timothy White has noted, Brian Wilson came from a troubled family background; there was a family history of mental illness, including suicide. Brian's father Murry, although never formally diagnosed, showed unmistakable signs of bipolar disorder.

There had been other signs of his growing problems, but these were more or less unheeded at the time. Wilson had been forced to withdraw from touring in December 1964 after suffering a terrifying anxiety attack during an airline flight. In October 1966, after flying to Michigan to rehearse The Beach Boys for their first stage performance of "Good Vibrations", he suffered another panic attack on the return flight and was only placated by having had the flight crew radio ahead to Los Angeles to arrange a welcoming committee. Wilson also probably aggravated his pre-existing problems by reputedly smoking large amounts of marijuana and hashish during the Smile period, as well as using amphetamines and had experimented during Summer Days' sessions with the powerful hallucinogen LSD. In the recent SMiLE documentary, Wilson speaks frankly about his drug use and reveals that he was also using barbiturates in addition to the other drugs he was taking.

In December, Brian was deeply troubled by a viewing of the surreal and disturbing John Frankenheimer film thriller Seconds, starring Rock Hudson. In his increasingly vulnerable and confused state, Brian convinced himself that the film's opening line "Good morning, Mr. Wilson"—and indeed in most of the film's content—somehow referred to him. He also reportedly became obsessed by the notion that his rival/mentor Phil Spector was somehow trying to control, dominate or even kill him. While much of Brian's paranoia was internally derived, it is important to note that there were some genuine bases for his fears -- his father had hired a private detective to investigate his son and his friends, and recent revelations about government files on music and film celebrities revealed that the Beach Boys (among many other groups) were attracting the attention of the FBI, as Frank Zappa openly alleged at the time.

As well as Brian's mental problems, there were many other business and legal worries surrounding the Beach Boys during the recording of Smile. These included Carl Wilson's call-up notice for the draft (which he was to fight as a conscientious objector), and the group's contractual disputes with Capitol over royalty payments, as well as their attempt to terminate their contract (a legacy of Murry's management) and establish their own label, Brother Records. Although usually overlooked, another and even more personal pressure was that, in addition to his musical roles, Brian was also married and was the father of a young family.

Amidst his increasingly erratic behavior and his escalating use of drugs, Brian Wilson's condition began to become a concern for his friends, colleagues and family. Yet, although stories of his sometimes bizarre behavior have now become the stuff of legend, his session musicians have often stated that they never saw Wilson behave in the studio with anything less than total professionalism.

Creatively speaking, Wilson was in a uniquely vulnerable position compared to his major commercial rivals, and there is no doubt that he was under considerable pressure to "deliver the goods" with rivals such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan all of whom, especially The Beatles and Dylan, were at their creative peak at the time.

The growing conflict within the Beach Boys about Smile, which reached a peak during December 1966, was arguably the single most significant reason why Smile was repeatedly postponed and finally scrapped. It is likely that the 6 December 1966 session for "Cabin Essence" was the scene of the famous argument about the song's lyrics between Van Dyke Parks and Mike Love, and the situation evidently worsened during the 15 December vocal sessions for "Surf's Up" and "Wonderful". The band was filmed by CBS during this session which, according to Jules Siegel, went "very badly". Later the same day, Wilson recorded his now-legendary solo piano demo of "Surf's Up". Although there were more Smile sessions (on 23 December, 9 January and 23 January) work on most of the major tracks effectively stopped after 15 December.

The major source of conflict appears to have been the increasing antagonism between Mike Love and the Brian Wilson/Van Dyke Parks partnership, although Bruce Johnston has also indicated in a web forum discussion that there was wider opposition to the project, and named both Capitol Records and Wilson's father Murry.

Love had written lyrics for many of the Beach Boys songs prior to Pet Sounds, so it is not surprising that he would have been resentful of Parks' role as Brian's new writing partner; he was probably also concerned about the consequent loss of income from royalties. But he is on record as saying that he was fearful that the band risked losing their audience if they tinkered with their proven hit formula. In a recent interview in Mojo magazine, Love also stated that he was suspicious of the new 'friends' with whom Brian was associating, and that his opposition to these people—whom he regarded as hangers-on who were exploiting Brian and supplying him with 'hard' drugs—was another major source of conflict, and that some who have been critical of him did so because he had told them to "take a hike". On a practical level, it is also likely that Love had a genuine concern that Wilson's new music was becoming too complex for the group to be able to perform live.

In the same interview, Love denied disliking Pet Sounds and also claimed that he liked the Smile music and only disliked the lyrics. This is strongly contradicted by several other participants, most notably Van Dyke Parks himself. Responding to Love's claims in a letter to the magazine's editor, Parks was strongly critical of Love's comments, which he described as "revisionism", and he was unequivocal in naming Love's dislike of "Smile" as one of the major factors in the collapse of the project.

Wilson continued to work on "Heroes & Villains" and other cuts including "Do You Like Worms" and "Vega-Tables", as well as taping numerous musical fragments that were probably intended to serve as links between the main songs. Through the first half of 1967 the album's release date was repeatedly postponed as Wilson tinkered with the recordings, experimenting with different takes and sounds, unable or unwilling to supply a completed version of the album. Another significant factor, cited in the Smile documentary, was Brian's first hearing of The Beatles' new single Strawberry Fields Forever. He heard the song while driving his car and was so struck by it that he had to pull over and listen; he then commented to his companion that The Beatles had "got there first". Although he apparently then laughed about the comment, the stunning new Beatles production apparently affected him deeply. The final, irrevocable blow came in early March 1967 when, after gradually distancing himself from Wilson and the group, Van Dyke Parks finally quit the project.

Capitol evidently still hoped right up to the last that Smile might eventually appear, but on 6 May, only a few weeks before the release of The Beatles' groundbreaking Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beach Boys' press officer, Derek Taylor ruefully announced to the British press that the Smile project had been shelved and that the album would not be released.

From famous to infamous

Following the stillbirth of Smile, and the release of the anti-climatic and patched-together Smiley Smile that September, Brian Wilson retreated from the public eye, increasingly hampered by drug and mental health problems, but his legend grew and the Smile period came to be seen as the pivotal episode in his decline; Wilson would become tagged as one of the classic celebrity drug casualties of the rock era.

Had Smile been released as originally conceived, it might have been a dismal failure or it might have stood alongside Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Dylan's Blonde on Blonde as a landmark album that marked a turning point in rock history; but in its absence an almost magical aura grew up around the project and its legendary status was only heightened by Brian Wilson's tragic personal disintegration. By the beginning of the 1990s, Smile had earned its place as the most infamous unreleased album in the rock era and become a focal point for bootleg album makers and collectors.

Smile Resurrected

On February 20, 2004, 37 years after it was conceived, a complete version of Smile was performed by Wilson along with his backing band, which includes former Beach Boys guitarist Jeff Foskett and members of The Wondermints, in a live performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London. This performance was made whole by the addition of either lost or newly-composed lyrics that filled the gaps left open by the original 1966-67 Beach Boys sessions. This show was followed by subsequent performances elsewhere in Britain.

Recording of the new version of Smile began in April 2004 with his ten-piece touring band, augmented by a ten-piece string section and an acoustic bassist. The basic tracks were taped at Sunset Sound in just four days, with overdubbing and mixing continuing through April, May, and June.

On September 28, 2004, Brian Wilson released his newly recorded studio version of the Smile album, to critical praise. For the new version, Wilson, Wondermints leader Darian Sahanaja, woodwind player/string arranger Paul Mertens, and lyricist Van Dyke Parks based their arrangements on the original, unreleased Beach Boys tapes to give Smile a coherent and fresh, updated sound.

Interestingly, although Brian was reported to have only included "Good Vibrations" in the original Smile track listing at Capitol's insistence, a new version of the song—featuring Wilson's Pet Sounds collaborator Tony Asher's original lyrics, rather than the later Mike Love lyrics—was included as the closing track of the album.

The new Smile album was followed by two U.S. tours, with its featured stop in New York's Carnegie Hall (this concert was broadcast on radio's NPR network). Wilson and company also took the show to Australia and New Zealand, as well as many countries throughout Europe.

The Showtime cable network released a documentary film about the making of Smile known as "Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of Smile." in the fall of 2004. And a DVD of a live version of the new Smile (shot in an L.A. studio) was released in May 2005, along with the Showtime/"Beautiful Dreamer" documentary.

Smile received multiple 2004 Grammy award nominations, including Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical (For Mark Linett). The album won one Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance (for "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow").

Track listing

Official 2004 Release

All songs by Brian Wilson/Van Dyke Parks, except where noted.

  1. "Our Prayer/Gee" (Brian Wilson/William Davis/Morris Levy) - 2:09
  2. "Heroes And Villains" - 4:53
  3. "Roll Plymouth Rock" - 3:48
  4. "Barnyard" - 0:58
  5. "The Old Master Painter/You Are My Sunshine" (Haven Gillespie/Beasley Smith) - 1:04
  6. "Cabin Essence" - 3:27
  7. "Wonderful" - 2:07
  8. "Song For Children" - 2:16
  9. "Child Is Father Of The Man" - 2:18
  10. "Surf's Up" - 4:07
  11. "I'm In Great Shape/I Wanna Be Around/Workshop" (Brian Wilson/Van Dyke Parks/Johnny Mercer/Sadie Vimmerstedt) - 1:56
  12. "Vega-Tables" - 2:19
  13. "On A Holiday" - 2:36
  14. "Wind Chimes" - 2:54
  15. "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" (Brian Wilson) - 2:27
  16. "In Blue Hawaii" - 3:00
  17. "Good Vibrations" (Brian Wilson/Tony Asher/Mike Love) - 4:36

Smile (Brimel/Nonesuch 79846) hit #13 in the US during a chart stay of 17 weeks. It reached #7 in the UK.

The songs that might have been

Based upon a handwritten note that Brian Wilson gave to Capitol Records in December 1966

  1. "Do You Like Worms"
  2. "Wind Chimes"
  3. "Heroes and Villains"
  4. "Surf's Up"
  5. "Good Vibrations"
  6. "Cabin Essence"
  7. "Wonderful"
  8. "I'm in Great Shape"
  9. "Child Is Father of the Man"
  10. "The Elements"
  11. "Vega-Tables"
  12. "The Old Master Painter"

This is based on a note given to Capitol in order for the track titles to be included on the album cover, however, the original cover states "see record for running order". All the evidence, including interviews with Brian himself, state that a final definitive running order was never decided upon until the release of the 2004 SMiLE.

Further reading

One of the principal sources of original information on Smile, and the basis for much of its legendary status, was Jules Siegel's article "Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!" which appeared in the first issue of Cheetah Magazine in October 1967. Almost equally influential was Domenic Priore's 1987 book Look, Listen, Vibrate, Smile.

See also

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