Thirty-seven years is a long time to wait for anything. Just consider the following: in the first months of 1967, Kurt Cobain wasn’t yet born (it’s now been more than a decade since his death). The Vietnam War was raging, while then-president Lyndon B. Johnson faced mounting criticism over the fiasco – especially from the youth counterculture, just then emerging. The first man on the moon was two years away. Nobody owned a home computer. Disco, punk and heavy metal didn’t exist; the first rap record would emerge a dozen years hence. And Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys was slated to release his masterpiece, “SMiLE”.
But something went wrong along the way. A lot of things, actually. The group was in the midst of financial disputes with Capitol Records. As the counterculture exerted its pull ever more strongly on the nation’s youth, the clean-cut Beach Boys began to look like real squares. And Brian, the musical brains behind the group and the man primarily responsible for their continued success, was falling apart. A nervous breakdown in late 1964 had prompted him to leave touring behind and focus his energies in the studio, and while his retreat produced some of the most sophisticated and brilliant popular music in America’s history, the idle time that he’d never known before caused him to indulge in the use of LSD and amphetamines while an ever-expanding cadre of hangers-on indulged his increasingly alarming and bizarre behavior.
Brian started the “SMiLE” project in the summer of 1966, and the first song that the sessions produced, “Good Vibrations,” famously took 100 hours of studio time to complete. When the song was released as a single in the fall and shot straight to Number 1, Capitol became anxious for an album; at the same time, Brian’s perfectionism and disintegrating mental state caused the sessions to drag on for months. The release of the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” instantly hailed as the greatest record in rock history, made him feel as though he’d been beaten to the punch. Furthermore, Wilson, by early 1967 a neurological wreck, had forgotten how all of the thousands of hours of music he’d recorded were supposed to fit together as coherent songs. Dejected, he abandoned the project in May of 1967 and began a near-total retreat from the outside world. In the meantime, “SMiLE” gained cult status as the most legendary unreleased record in rock history.
While reading up on the latest news at one of the popular music websites I visit periodically in the middle of last year, I came upon the following headline: “Brian Wilson Re-Records SMiLE For Fall Release”. Having been a serious Beach Boys fan for about five years, my initial response was, “WHAA???” It just didn’t seem possible. Could Wilson, now 62 and one of rock’s most notorious head-cases, pick up the pieces and put the thing together just like that? Furthermore, with the painful ordeal nearly four decades behind him and his formidable place in pop’s history long since assured, why would he? Why now?
Unsurprisingly, he had some help. Darien Sahanaja, one of the members of Brian’s touring band, made the suggestion in 2003. The record’s original lyricist, Van Dyke Parks, was duly contacted, and Parks holed up with Brian and Sahanaja to reconstruct the project. In October of 2004, “SMiLE” was released, 37 years after fans had originally expected it. Is it a masterpiece? Hard to say. Does it succeed beyond any reasonable expectations? Hell yeah.
The record is divided up into three suites, each with something of a guiding theme. The first might be called the “Pioneer” suite, sketching an impressionistic snapshot of America’s formative years, complete with oblique humor and Wilson’s childlike sense of wonder. “Heroes and Villains” an earlier version of which was released as a single in 1967 – when it performed well below expectations – is present in a new recording here. Sort of a comic portrait of a frontier town, replete with a booming orchestra, an echoing whistle figure and swooping trombones, “Heroes and Villains” sounds far better now than in any earlier versions.
One of Wilson’s ingenious symphonic transitions carries over into “Roll Plymouth Rock,” which cascades between a burbling, bass-heavy saunter and a rather trippy harpsichord refrain with “oonga” noises behind the lyric, “bicycle rider, just see what you done / Done to the church of the American Indian.” If all this sounds a little bizarre, it is. Van Dyke Parks is a notoriously abstruse lyricist, and Wilson’s whimsical, effects-laden sense of humor may just leave you confused. But there’s no denying the beauty and invention of the music. The record’s second suite, which might be called the “Liberty” suite, conjures images of Ellis Island, the tide of immigration and the flowering of new generations at the turn of the century and contains what might be “SMiLE”’s most moving moment. Over oceanic piano and calmly reverberating guitar, Wilson sings “Easy, my child, it’s just enough to believe.” “I believe,” the backing voices respond. “Out of the wild / Into what you can conceive / You’ll achieve.”
Corny, maybe, but the music that supports such sentiments ought to melt even the hardest heart. I might mention that the final suite – which could be dubbed the “Leisure” suite, as it largely concerns the fruits of recreation afforded after the worker’s day is over, is somewhat less cohesive. It’s still pretty astonishing, though, and by this point Wilson has realized his purpose. What emerges is a valentine to a bygone America that probably never existed. But Brian Wilson has finally realized a lifelong dream, and the mythical vision of America which emerges from it is in danger of being eclipsed by the megalomaniacal power-mongers whose deluded vision threatens to turn the dream into a nightmare. As the present, ugly reality comes to bear, “SMiLE” is a tonic we could all use. And take seriously.
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