Brian Wilson, Smile
Featured Album
Proven to be worth the wait
The enigma that is Smile begins on the highest note of hopeful aspirations, an invocation of "Prayer" that augurs well for a concept album its architect intended to be a "teenage symphony to God." As the lovestruck year of 1967 began, all signs pointed to its eagerly awaited masterpiece grandeur — the success of "Good Vibrations," which had evolved from the Pet Sounds sessions to show Brian Wilson's technique of cutting-and-pasting wildly divergent soundscapes could combine commercial and artistic success — and Brian's immersion into a world in which everything clamored to make music.
There are tales of Wilson and his entourage sitting around the dinner table, crafting rhythmic patterns with silverware and place settings; putting a microphone on the musique concrete of vegetables crunching and barnyard animals baying and household tools banging; all snippets of song attempting to tie the four elements of this planet in a spherical radiance, along with Van Dyke Parks's retelling of the Ply-mythic journey across America from the time of the Mayflower to the return-to-the-sea of "In Blue Hawaii." It also undertook to untangle the Wilson family dynamic ("Child is Father of the Man"), reassert the primacy of wonder ("Wonderful"), trace a musicological tale that encapsulated twentieth century music from Tin Pan Alley (the sepulchral sample of "You Are My Sunshine") onward, and sell millions. Capitol had already printed up the cover, but there was no way Brian was going to meet a deadline that was rapidly stretching into infinity.
Reassembled and finished in 2004 by Brian and his helpmeets in the Wondermints, and even performed live to rapturous crowds, Smile has proved worth the wait. Though some of its songs would be found in truncated form on other Beach Boys albums, Smile does hold fast to its concept, meant to be listened to as a whole, melodic themes interspersing, rising to the surface only to be dragged beneath the waves and reappear in another setting, all simply gorgeous in texture and imagination. It is filled with humor, sometimes verging on the cartoon-esque, episodic yet never disjointed. The spine of the album is provided by "Heroes and Villains," (which, in edited form, did translate well to its eventual hit-singledom and inclusion on Smiley Smile), and its good vs. bad carousel view of life's dichotomy. "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow," with its invocation of flame (and the visual of L.A.'s greatest session musicians sitting in the studio dressed in fire hats as Chief Wilson directed them); and the quench of the healing waters of "Surf's Up" — are other highlights of one of the most deservedly celebrated albums of all time.
The other Beach Boys were not so sure, and the sessions devolved into endless arguments over what was right for a group founded in less cerebral pleasures. In the end, capsized by Brian's increasing descent into manic unpredictability, Smile became the Great Lost Album, and this, like a prodigal son, is the Finding.
