Beach Boys: The Smile Sessions
For nearly a half-century, the Beach Boys’ SMiLE has been one of the greatest myths in pop music history. Brian Wilson’s unfinished symphony was a “woulda-coulda-shoulda” prospect all the way. The album that some insist would have dwarfed the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper and forever changed the course of popular music instead drove Brian into a career-destroying nervous breakdown.
Thanks to The Smile Sessions, though, the album that never was finally is. This five-CD box set generally follows the framework of Brian’s 2004 rerecording of SMiLE material in sequencing songs and snippets from the 1966-67 sessions. But it outdoes Brian’s 21st-century version of SMiLE in two ways. Not only does it contain the simple presence of the rest of the Beach Boys, but it also boasts outtakes and snippets of studio dialogue that counter the common narrative that the project’s auteur was becoming a directionless crack-up. Instead, the studio chatter here features Brian calmly giving out instructions and encouragement to L.A. session musicians as well as frequently taking musical suggestions. On “Wonderful” (CD3) and “Wind Chimes” (CD4), Brian sounds self-assured and focused, and his legendary tinkering with “Heroes and Villains” is justified by its exponential improvement over an eight-month period.
But is the myth true? Would SMiLE have continued the Beach Boys hit parade that peaked with the release of its predecessor, Pet Sounds? Probably not. Nearly every song has an episodic quality that would have further alienated the “surfheads” already disappointed by the deeper possibilities of sound explored on Pet Sounds.
And that’s before you get to the lyrical content. SMiLE is nothing short of a challenging aural history of America. Journeying west from Plymouth Rock through cornfields and mountains to the California coast and Hawaii, we cycle through enough Native American chants, cowboy ditties, and barbershop singing to separate this from any psychedelic experience of the era. In a time when the British Invasion was still a reality on Yankee soil, SMiLE was a defiantly American experiment.
So although Brian and lyricist Van Dyke Parks found the new language they were looking for, it hasn’t been translated properly until now. The Smile Sessions validate the SMiLE project’s having been the stuff of legend for so long, and now that the puzzle pieces all fit together, it’s a sure bet that SMiLE’s brilliance will finally survive its myth.
- Mike Tony, Popscene with Mike Tony (Saturdays from 10-noon @ WQHS.org)
