Brian Wilson Smile Nonesuch The story of Smile's creation, abandonment, and recreation is about as close as the history of pop music has to a genuine classical Greek epic. The album itself, and the story of its creation, is segmented into three discreet acts: the setup, the suffering, and the ultimate triumph. That the album is symbolic of -- and in fact entirely entwined with -- Brian Wilson's life is no surprise. It's that big. It's that important, and I fear my language may simply not be enough, that my metaphorical skills may fall short of capturing the vast intricacies and astounding complexities that Smile contains. This may be the only record review you ever read that begs your forgiveness before it even begins. Dim the lights, raise the curtain. **(Warning: This is the single longest review ever run on Bornbackwards, it includes a long overview of the album's story as well as it's music. For those who know the story already, click here to skip to the review of the album. For those unwilling to read a raving review of academic length click here for the boring, condensed version.)** Smile: The Story ACT I: In which Brian Wilson, the talented young song-writer and producer behind the lovable Beach Boys, discovers the meaning of art with a capital A and finds myself to suddenly be an artist with a capital A. After producing a string of fun, sun-filled teen hits he suddenly has a foreign challenger upon the American charts: Enter The Beatles, stage left. The Beatles and their followers invade, wiping the charts clean and replacing them with a thousand British bands, but the Beach Boys survive and flourish, one of the few older American bands to do so. Exposed to Bob Dylan, the Beatles create Rubber Soul in 1965, the first album to see them break out of their original pop style and be taken seriously by listeners of 'important' music like jazz and folk. A young Brian Wilson sees it as a direct challenge: he needs to make his own serious work, he needs to outdo the Beatles. At this time his only other serious competition besides the Beatles is from Phil Spector's unending string of highly produced girl groups. He takes the best of both and in the spring of 1966 forsakes everything recognizable about the Beach Boys. He tells his wife Marilyn, "I am going to make the greatest rock album ever made." At the age of 24 he creates what until now has widely been considered his masterpiece: Pet Sounds. The album is a commercial failure in America, but in a surprising reversal it is a huge smash hit in England, after which the Beach Boys' popularity surpasses that of the Beatles. Exposed to Pet Sounds, the Beatles begin work on what is widely considered their masterpiece: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Undeterred by his failure in America, Brian Wilson marches forward, determined to best the Beatles yet again. He wills Smile to be as big an improvement over Pet Sounds as that was over all previous Beach Boys work. The young Brian Wilson is flush with ideas, suggesting that Smile will easily best Sgt Pepper and that it will be a 'teenage symphony to God'. After Smile he makes plans to produce a humor record, a symphony of drums, and a record about good health. Brian becomes obsessed with his work, spending six months on "Good Vibrations" alone, constantly reworking structure, experimenting with sound, and running the musicians through thousands of takes. Enter the media, stage right. The focus on Brian and Smile becomes intense, none other than Leonard Bernstein takes interest as whispers of 'genius' circulate. The Beach Boys fight Brian though, they think his new Smile music is too weird, that it won't connect with the public like Pet Sounds, and that it jeopardizes their position as hit-makers. Mike Love, bass-vocal and cousin of Brian, fights especially hard, jealous that he has been replaced by new, better lyricists for two consecutive albums: Tony Asher for Pet Sounds and the young Van Dyke Parks for Smile. Close curtain. ACT II: In which our hero Brian Wilson loses everything he holds dear, scraps Smile, and retreats from the world as his sanity crumbles. Under intense pressure from all sides, Brian collapses. His drug use is out of control. Hostility with the Beach Boys and Mike Love leads to animosity in the studio with consistent and intense ego clashes before any work can be accomplished. Brian's attention is diverted from the album in an attempt to break free of Capitol Records and establish his own Brother Records. The company winds up as a subsidiary of Capitol, which demands he finally release Smile, which by 1967 is now long overdue and long past budget. The Beatles release Sgt. Pepper to huge acclaim, influencing the entire subsequent course of pop music. The moment is missed, Brian has lost, and Smile is doomed. Exit The Beatles, stage left. After months and months of work and with the album nearly complete, he scraps it all. Brian abandons his artistic pretensions and retreats back into quick, casual pop music, pumping out both Smiley Smile and Wild Honey in the course of a year. Rather than the grand sweeping songs Brian was working on, Smiley Smile features five Smile songs in radically reworked minimalist versions that feel more like casual demos than completed songs. After all the hype, all the months of waiting, and all the media attention, Smiley Smile -- while a totally unique and incredibly human album -- fails utterly. Brian's drug use increases. With the moment missed and Brian's grand ambitions stymied, the Beach Boys are shunned by the emerging hippie hordes who view them by their silly, old surf-and-turf image. The counterculture rejects the Beach Boys as symbolic of a recent but rapidly dying past. Once the leaders of the pop world, by 1974 the Beach Boys are relegated to a simple nostalgia act. Mike Love gets his wish to return to the band's old pop hits, but in a very unexpected way. He will sing the band's old hits ad nauseum for the rest of his life, remaining the last original member in the modern day incarnation of the Beach Boys. With his confidence shattered and his ability broken, Brian retreats. He gets fat, grows a beard, increases his drug use and goes insane. He refuses to leave his house. He refuses to leave his room. He has only minimal contact or interaction with his daughter Carnie, later of Wilson-Phillips. He hears voices in his head and becomes a public oddity, the most famous recluse in the world after Howard Hughes and JD Salinger. Occasionally he is found wondering the streets of LA for days on end like a homeless bum. When they need a commercial boost, The Beach Boys routinely drag him out to record and tour with them. He had always hated touring, and when they have no more need for him, Brian just as quickly returns back into his fractured psyche, oblivious to the world around him. His mind, always quite fragile, is broken by the failure of Smile. His wife Marilyn, faithful to him for 15 years, throughout the worst of his insanity, finally leaves with the children in 1979. In 1982, Brian is official fired from the Beach Boys. All is lost for decades on end. Close curtain. ACT III: In which Brian, aged and haggard finally returns to the world, damaged but recovering, and finds his redemption in the very album that nearly killed him 37 years before. Enter Dr. Eugene Landy, stage left. Landy miraculously saves Brian's life, cleans him up and leads him back to a small portion of his old confidence. Brian cuts his first solo album in 1988, something he had considered originally doing back in 1967 with Smile to avoid the conflicts with the Beach Boys. "Rio Grande", an eight-minute suite about the life of the river, shows the clear influence of the long abandoned Smile sessions. But Landy is also a parasite, and his control over his patient is obsessive as he forces the fragile Brian to cut off all contact with friends and family. Landy begins managing Brian's financial affairs and taking song-writer and producer credits on Brian's 1990 follow up, Sweet Insanity, which was rejected by Sire Records. Brian's friends and family intercede and in 1991 Landy is legally barred from having any further contact with Brian. Exit Landy, stage right. With his recovery well underway, ultimately thanks to the shady work of Dr. Landy, Brian remarries in 1995. Enter Melinda Ledbetter, stage left. Together they adopt two daughters. Over the years Pet Sounds is salvaged from rock history and reconsidered by the US music press to be one the greatest rock albums ever, just like had Brian predicted. After the success of the CD reissue, and with his new emotional support system, Brian decides to do something he had always hated: he goes on tour. In 2001, for the album's 35th anniversary, he sets up a tour of Pet Sounds in England, backed by the Wondermints. Enter Wondermints leader Darian Sahanaja, stage right. His confidence restored by the critical praise that greeted the concerts and the commercial success of the resulting Pet Sounds Live album and DVD, it was time for Brian to return to Smile at long last. Over the years several attempts had been made to compile and release the fragments of the Smile sessions, but nothing ever materialized. It was exceedingly difficult to compile because Brian had recorded the album in bits and pieces at different studios across several months, all to be edited together later. The album seemed cursed. For years whenever someone would mention Smile to Brian he would clam up, act defensive, and mumble things about it being inappropriate music. It remained a sore spot for Brian: his great tragedy, his white whale. He even claimed several times to have destroyed the tapes, but the various attempts to release them proved otherwise. Various Smile tracks resurfaced as cornerstones of Beach Boys albums in the '70s, but were seriously reworked and often finished by Brian's brother Carl Wilson. The bits and pieces of Smile the band managed to piece together invariably overshadowed the rest of their work and haunted their career as a band. While our hero Brian was busy denying it's existence, a veritable cottage industry of Smile bootlegs sprang up (mostly leaked from an '87 mixing session for a proposed Smile boxset that was never finished) and a fervent fan community established itself on the internet. Now is the time though, and Darian and Melinda urge Brian to take a second look at his greatest failure, the cornerstone of his life. A series of Smile concerts occur in England to deafening critical praise and everyone from Roger Daltry to Elvis Costello to Paul McCartney attends. Brian and Van Dyke Parks, reunited on stage, receive a standing ovation. Taking the Wondermints into the studio, Brian at last finishes and rerecords Smile, 37 years after our first act. As the oldest and most fragile member of the Wilson family, Brian surprisingly outlives both of his Beach Boy brothers, Dennis and Carl, living long enough to recover his sanity, start a new family and complete his long-delayed masterwork. Brian is redeemed. Bring out the cast for a final bow. Close the curtain, raise the lights. Smile: The Album What Brian Wilson and the Wondermints have managed to accomplish is nothing short of incredible. Their recreation of Smile is a note-for-note reproduction, nearly flawless except for Brian's aging vocal chords. Indeed the 2004 version of Smile actually manages to outdo the original '67 Smile sessions in a number of notable places: "Heroes and Villains", in all its schizophrenic glory, makes more sense as a piece of a piece of the first movement than it did as the original Beach Boys single from Smiley Smile; "Vega-Tables" has much crisper production and doesn't feel nearly so ramshackle; the crescendo of "Surf's Up" is absolutely beautiful. The songs are all linked together into three self-contained movements, flowing directly into each other and lending the album a feeling of vastness, a truly palpable sense of the epic. This was probably not something that Brian had in mind when he first wrote these songs, though it actually helps the album make more sense than the fragmented original sessions. Songs that were only half-completed at the time are gloriously reborn here as centerpieces of the album. Indeed, the whole 2004 Smile album feels more focused, more direct, and over all much less weird then the original sessions, though virtually nothing about the songs was altered. Remarkably, this means that the aging Brian Wilson, in managing to finally complete his masterpiece, has actually surpassed what he achieved at the age of 25, when he was at his absolute peak. The few exceptions are "Good Vibrations", which suffers from a limp performance and totally unnecessary new lyrics. To be fair, almost nothing in the world could live up to the exuberance, invention, and sheer awesomeness of the original "Good Vibrations". Likewise, Brian's voice is much rougher than it was in 1967, when he was arguably one of the best professional vocalists in the world. He could literally sing every part of a Beach Boys harmony himself, and almost considered doing so when he ran into trouble with the Boys at the original sessions. But here, he sounds like an old man, and he can no longer hit the sweet high notes that used to be so distinctive. He doesn't flub any notes (almost remarkable considered his rather spotty live performances, to say the least), and he mostly relies on the Wondermints to hit the notes he just can't reach anymore. But such is age, and his vocal flaws are most clearly evident on "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes and Villains". What is spectacular though, is that at this late stage of his life, Smile has undoubtedly surpassed Wilson's former masterpiece, the perennial favorite Pet Sounds. It really is as big a sonic improvement over Pet Sounds as that was over previous Beach Boys material. It is a musical breakthrough, and may even surpass its original competition -- what is largely considered to the greatest rock album of all time -- Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (though that is entirely a matter of my own opinion). It certainly doesn't have the same accessibly, or the sheer number of true pop songs, as Sgt. Pepper, but in terms of complexity, originality, ambition, and execution it far surpasses everything on that record save "A Day in the Life", the finest song the Beatles ever recorded. ACT I: In which our old hero Brian Wilson takes us through a psychedelic journey of American expansionism and the old West, from Plymouth Rock to Hawaii. The opening strains of "Our Prayer/Gee" lend the album an instant mood of importance as Brian and company join in a two-minute wordless harmony reminiscent of a church choir. The prayer is followed by a fragment of "Gee" an old, and mostly forgotten, doo-wop number from the '50s by the Crows. This is the first of many old American songs that Brian manages to incorporate into Smile in brief interludes. This leads into "Heroes and Villains", Smile's most fragmentary song, and the most ambitious in terms of songwriting. Brian is happy and exuberant but his vocals, unfortunately, are coarse. The song goes through several variations of the same theme and actually feels like several songs stitched together, traveling through absolutely crazy-sounding vocal harmonies like nothing you've ever heard. It's a roller coaster ride as the song suddenly stops at several points and picks up with something completely different as it follows the loves and adventures of a western pioneer. With a timpani roll we're into "Roll Plymouth Rock" which bemoans the fate of the American Indian. A breezy vocal melody over a pounding timpani gives way to the 'bicycle rider' theme, previously a mysterious fragment that reappeared in several forms during 1967. 'Bicycle rider' features a brilliantly intertwining piano and harpsichord rhythm overrun by deep and rather frightening Indian chants, 'ooga chaka ooga chaka', channeling the spirit of the Ghost Dance. Meanwhile Brian's high-pitched vocals bemoan the fate of the American Indian, and mirrors a similar image and melody from "Heroes and Villains": "Bicycle rider, just look what you've done to the church of the American Indian". "Barnyard" is just that, a barnyard, complete with farm animal sounds (an idea the Beatles admittedly stole on Sgt. Pepper). The original unfinished lyric-less version made little sense, but here it fits perfectly into the Americana theme and lightens the atmosphere considerably. A down-tempo version of "You Are My Sunshine" follows, transformed from a happy love song into a haunting lament by its whispered delivery and reversion to past tense, "You were my sunshine, my only sunshine." The movement ends with the utterly brilliant "Cabin Essence", which is vastly improved over the original in terms of impact and clarity. A plucked banjo is mirrored by tiny 'doing doing doing' vocals as Brian sings of his home on the range. The lazy atmosphere is pierced for the chorus which is supposed to represent the intrusion of the railroad into the peaceful countryside. The feel of the railroad is captured musically in the form a loud and menacing cello, metal pounding, and swirling wordless vocal harmonies that freely float up and down. This leads to the songs' swelling conclusion of brass and slide guitar, "Over and over the crow cries uncover the corn field'. ACT II: In which Smile begins to resemble the baroque and sweeping emotionality of Pet Sounds. It doesn't have quite the same 'wall of sound' sensibilities as that album but the songs gradually increase in sonic complexity, culminating in the sweeping and totally beautiful "Surf's Up". This second movement is so coherent, so totally cohesive, and so well executed it is the new high point of Brian Wilson's entire career. The movement starts with "Wonderful" which begin with just Brian alone with a harpsichord. It's the simplest song on the album, which suits the song's 'loss of innocence' theme. More instruments and vocals slowly join Brian as he details a young Christian girl's deflowering and loss of faith, "Farther down the path was a mystery / through the recess, the chalk and numbers / a boy bumped into her one, one, wonderful / all fall down and lost in the mystery / lost it all to a nonbeliever and all that's left / is a girl who's loved by her mother and father." As the song progresses trumpets swell and vocals back Brian in aching harmonies. The calm simplicity of "Wonderful" is broken suddenly by a pounding harpsichord and a new drumbeat in "Song for Children" which presumably follows the child of the girl from "Wonderful": "where is the father, father of the son, father of the child … where is the wonderful me/wonderful you." "Surf's Up" follows what I imagine to be the child's disillusionment with society and discovery of his mother's long-lost faith by way of a simple child's song. The song's baroque beauty and heartbreakingly beautiful melody makes for Smile's single most powerful song. Brass and strings swell behind Brian as he pounds out piano chords and takes us through the fallacy of the modern consumer aristocracy. The line "Surf's Up! Aboard a tidal way / Come about hard and join the young / and often spring you gave" is mournful enough to close the song, but Brian forges ahead, giving an explosive and incredibly affective ending, as he sadly wails, "I heard the word / wonderful thing / a children's song … have you listened as they play? Their song is love and the children know the way." He's backed by the rising "ch-ch-ch child of the man" harmony that first appeared in "Song for Children". All hyperbole aside, I am going to expose myself to you for a moment: the ending of "Surf's Up" may be the single most beautiful thing I have ever heard. Every time I hear it, I experience a physical reaction: my scalp gets cold and the hairs on the back of my neck rise. ACT III: In which Brian, after showing us the history of America and the emotions of the people in it, conquers the natural elements of the world around them by conjuring the forces of nature through his music. "Workshop" continues the musique concrete idea begun with "Barnyard" by including the sounds of an actual workshop -- buzzsaws and hammers -- an utterly bizarre thing to find on a pop album. This leads us to "Vega-Tables" one of the poppiest and strangest songs of the album, presumably embodying both the 'good health' and 'humor' albums that Brian hoped to one day make. The majority of the song is carried by Brian's stunningly creative harmonies. Over a deep, quirky piano groove Brian lets us know exactly what his favorite vegetable is. Pinging kitchen sounds act as a strange kind of percussion before giving way to a back-beat composed out of the sounds of actual crunching vegetables. Utterly strange harmonies that sound almost like giggling rise and fall behind Brian before giving way to the classic 'Mama says' section of the song, which was originally released as its own entity on 1968's Wild Honey. Deep throat croaking provides the bass voice and a bit later exciting popping harmonies fly into the air and finally conclude the song. After the 'earth' segment of "Workshop" and "Vega-Tables", "Holiday" works as the introduction to the air and sea portions of the movement. The song features slide whistles and rolling xylophone and brings back the lyrical imagery of Hawaii and the "rock, rock, roll, Plymouth Rock roll over" harmonies, both of which come from the first movement's "Roll Plymouth Rock". This gives way the tinkling xylophone of and sad but breezy vocals of "Wind Chimes". Surprisingly, the bouncy xylophone actually does sound like wind chimes being moved by Brian's breath as he sings. At its end, the the song explodes into a bombastic orchestration and breaks down into a piano and harpsichord rhythm reminiscent of 'bicycle rider' from "Roll Plymouth Rock" before exploding twice more. "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" is next, conjuring the element of fire. It is this song that most demonstrates Brian's insane genius, ambition, and outstanding creativity in 1967. A menacing and distorted bass guitar rolls underneath wailing slide whistle and screeching violins that sound like the sirens of a fire engine. The violin squeals as the bows are run up and down the strings. The sporadic drums at the song's end achieve the sounds of a tumbling building. It sounds unlike anything ever attempted before in pop music. The song is so powerful that when a wave of fire broke out in the greater Los Angeles area after the recording session, Brian was afraid his music had actually caused it. For years Brian claimed to have burned the tapes, for fear of unleashing their power, and "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" became one of the most legendary pieces of the Smile puzzle. "In Blue Hawaii" follows the fire as delayed voices whisper "water, water, water" and echo and wail against each other. It really, truly sounds like the ripples in a pool of water. The liquid atmosphere is broken suddenly as the band exuberantly shouts. Piano, flutes and drums work out a catchy rhythm followed by more Indian chants and high, rising melodies reminiscent of old jazz vocalists. It's perfectly arranged, never repeating, and despite the absence of a real chorus it works as one of the poppiest songs on the album. As such, it bridges the creepy power of "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" and the familiar pop sounds of "Good Vibrations", which begins after a reprise of "Our Prayer". "Good Vibrations" is the perfect conclusion to the album as it was Brian's single most ambitious and successful single ever and the first Beach Boys single to sell over a million copies. The song wonderfully caps the elements suite with the mysterious power of physical and psychic vibrations from the ether, conjured by the brilliant use of chopping cello and wailing Theremin. Living at a point in time when pop music actually has a certifiable history, I've known all my life what the important albums are, what they mean, and what their impact was. There was no guesswork in analyzing music, people had made those decisions for me, all the shock value of hearing Pet Sounds or The Velvet Underground & Nico for the first time was gone, I knew what to expect and knew just what the album in question did and had always done. This is the first time I have ever heard a 'new' classic album, held it in my hands, discovered its meaning and decided its importance for myself. It is utterly exhilarating. Smile is the only album that will ever earn a 10 here at BBW, it is the only album to make our rating scale irrelevant. That 10 up there can be any number you want really. If you need it to make sense: the original Smile gets a five, and this new recreation, for matching and surpassing the original in almost every way -- against all odds and despite a nearly 40-year interval -- gets another five. Leonard Bernstein was right! Amazingly, Smile makes more sense in the context of 2004 (after the Beatles, after Brian's insanity, after this kind of pop music has been long dead, and after mainstream music itself became a wasteland) than it ever did in 1967. Who knows if would have been a commercial success back then, it might have been just too weird, too ambitious, too unprecedented to connect with the public. But to see Brian Wilson reclaim his life, finish his masterpiece, and recover his damaged genius is amazing and inspiring. It's also too good of a story to be true, and Smile is almost too good of an album to be believed. It's breadth, it's scope and the very fact of its successful execution is truly incredible. I simply can not be objective about reviewing this album: it is the greatest thing I have ever heard. I am humbled. -exadore 10/18/04