Turning to my CD collection for solace, I find that the next album in my alphabetical odyssey is The Beach Boys' Smile. Now, I'm not one for hippies - I distrust the narcissism and flakiness which betrayed the efforts of serious revolutionaries in the 1950s and 1960s - and the Beach Boys were if not hippies themselves, at least soundtracked the tamer shores of hippyness. A mantra of dope and surfing does not produce radical change.
But that's all by the by. Slip on Smile and you're transported to a different psychical world. It's part of the Beach Boys' mythos, an album Brian Wilson called his 'teenage symphony to God, the never-legally-released follow-up to Pet Sounds, which Brian Wilson composed in his inspired and desperate attempt to keep up with the Beatles, a battle which led to decades of mental health problems. A version was released in 2004 and some tracks appeared on later albums, but not Smile as it was written. Oh yes - Wilson wrote the album in a big sand box he'd had installed in his living room.
'Good Vibrations' is the most famous track - under the jauntiness of the simple melody is an incredibly complex piece of music, stitched together from 30 pieces of music. Other tracks are nursery rhymes, snatches of half-remembered hymns and children's songs, underpinned with composition techniques learned from the experimental classical music scene! What's it about? America - from the Pilgrim Fathers to Hawaii.
Sadly, Wilson's mental health problems, disagreements within the band and the Beatles' releases of 'Strawberry Fields' and Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band ended the album's chance of release. A lost classic.
Here's Surf's Up and Good Vibrations in the amazing stereo mix (the album was composed in mono). Great Theremin! Followed by God Only Knows, from Pet Sounds. Give them a listen - under the apparent lightheartedness, there's heartbreak, fear and terror in a shiny pop package!
4 comments:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHHH! What! Hippy? Beach Boys? Eh? What? Please re-check those history books.
Also 'never legally released?' the bootlegs of smile are not some sort of supressed masterpiece, they are what could be scraped together from the abandoned recording sessions. Smile was never near to being finished (hence the legendary status, the what if...ness of it all) To refer to "Smile as it was written" is preposterous in the extreme.
Wilson's illness halted the recording of smile, not its release. I have no idea on earth why you would think the release of Strawberry Fields/ Sergeant Pepper stopped the release of Smile. As a big fan of the Beatles and Beach Boys this is something I have never once even seen suggested before and as the record was never recorded I would think the Beatles releases never really became a factor anywhere. And why would they? Very confusing.
Are you trying to revise the history of pop music?
Wasn't there a story about Wilson being freaked out by the building opposite their studio burning down whilst they were recording the track 'fire'? Apparently he saw it as an omen. There was the mish-mash 'Smiley Smile' which was subsequently released. It was made up of the salvageable remnants of the session and few new bits, it's actually a really good album despite not really resembling the original project. Paul McCartney munches a percussive carrot on the track 'vegetables' to boot.
Good Isley brothers track Ben.
There are plenty of quotes from Wilson about his perceived competition with the Beatles - they apparently felt the same way.
'Preposterous in the extreme'. Bit strong, matey. Are you OK?
There's a coherent album in Smile - but yes, the record company decided against releasing Smile, in agreement with the Beach Boys, because Sgt. Pepper's appeared and a rethink was called for (again, plenty of sources for that).
'Many factors combined to put intense pressure on Brian Wilson as Smile neared completion: Wilson's own mental instability, the pressure to create against fierce internal opposition to his new music, the relatively unenthusiastic response to Pet Sounds, Carl Wilson's draft resistance, and a major dispute with Capitol Records. Matters were complicated by Wilson's reliance on both prescription and illegal drugs, amphetamines in particular, which only exacerbated his underlying mental health problems.'
'Brian Wilson says that like most of the songwriters and producers of the '60s the Beatles pushed him to do his best work. Wilson told the avclub.com that his inspiration to create the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds was due to feeling direct competition with the "Fab Four," recalling that, "I heard Rubber Soul one night in my house here in L.A., and I was so blown out that I said, 'I have to record an album as good or better than Rubber Soul. If I ever do anything in my life, I'm going to make that good an album.' And so we did."'
his came at a terrible time when Wilson was trying to finish the album and, right along the way, The Beatles were working on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. In April 1967, Wilson—who was suffering growing mental problems—was "deeply affected by hearing a tape of the Pepper song "A Day in the Life", which Paul McCartney played to him in Los Angeles.[32] Soon after, Smile was abandoned, and Wilson would not return to complete it until 2003. Van Dyke Parks later noted, "...Brian had a nervous collapse. What broke his heart was Sgt. Pepper." (Will Hodgkinson, 'The Unknown Surfer', Guardian Friday Review, 1999).
Psychologically overwhelmed by the cancellation of Smile, the release of The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the birth of his first child Carnie in 1968, Wilson began having a diminished creative role with The Beach Boys.
I seem to have not made myself clear. THERE IS NO ALBUM CALLED SMILE. Is that clear now?
Wilson is on record as saying that there was no track list until the recent re-vision. You cannot release what does not exist.
Of course there was a rivalry between the Beatles and Beach Boys, I am not contesting that. I am contesting the idea of a record executive not releasing an album because it was percieved to be an artistic runner-up, especially as there was no album to release.
If I refered to Mahler's 5347th symphony 'as it was written' that would be preposterous in the extreme would it not? Because he never wrote it. The same is true of Smile. A few random songs does not an album make (obviously as a fan of lo-fi this may never have occurred to you HA HA HA)
The whole argument is doubly redundant as the record company DID release an album of the Smile offcuts, as Graham mentions, called Smiley Smile. It is a fantasy to suggest that the Smile bootlegs are in any way a more 'authentic' version of Smile.
"in May of 1967, Brian...much to everybody's dismay abandoned Smile, unfinished"
Sleeve notes to Smiley Smile / Wild Honey
What I object to is your framing the nonexistence of Smile as some sort of Capitalist conspiracy with 'the man' holding back a classic. The album has never existed.
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