At last, after 45 years, the lis­tener can make up their own mind.
Is Smile by the Beach Boys a work of genius or did it deserve to be buried?
The Smile Ses­sions box is mas­sive. Five CDs, a dou­ble vinyl album, two 7” sin­gles, a poster repli­cat­ing the Smile album cover, a photo book­let and tes­ti­mo­ni­als by the sur­viv­ing Beach Boys in a hard cover book that also includes essays.
At the cen­tre of Smile are 49 min­utes of music and Brian Wil­son.
After 1966’s Pet Sounds, a remark­able com­ing of age state­ment that didn’t sell, Wil­son was being hailed as a genius. He was only 24 years old but had clear ideas where he wanted to take his music. Wil­son rebounded from the dis­ap­point­ing fail­ure of Pet Sounds with the six month marathon that was “Good Vibra­tions,” The Beach Boys’ biggest suc­cess.
He stayed at home, writ­ing and pro­duc­ing music while the other Beach Boys — Al Jar­dine, Mike Love, Bruce John­ston, Carl and Den­nis Wil­son — toured.
They came home to a Wil­son who had teamed with lyri­cist Van Dyke Parks and a bunch of recorded frag­ments of which they couldn’t make sense.
Mean­while, a sen­si­tive, delicately-balanced Brian was falling apart. Love, for one, didn’t like Parks’ lyrics, didn’t under­stand them to sing them. The oth­ers, alarmed by the tank­ing of Pet Sounds, feared that Brian Wil­son was mess­ing up a good thing. They wanted songs about cars and girls and sum­mer nights, not dove-nested tow­ers or colum­nated ruins domino.
That resis­tance and other fac­tors led to Wil­son break­ing down and the scrap­ping of Smile.
Over the years, ver­sions of Smile leaked out, var­i­ous songs showed up on later Beach Boys albums, fac­sim­i­les were boot­legged, and Smile achieved a mythic sta­tus. The great lost album.
In 2004, Wil­son and his incred­i­ble (and incred­i­bly devoted) back­ing band recon­structed Smile. Great as the result­ing record was, as Brian Wil­son notes, “Peo­ple loved what me and my band had done but it made ‘em want to hear all the orig­i­nal record­ings.”
So here they are. Hav­ing Smile is enough. The addi­tional discs of the Smile ses­sions are fas­ci­nat­ing though pos­si­bly too much of a good thing. Does any­one need 33 dif­fer­ent excerpts from “Heroes And Vil­lains? Twenty-four vari­a­tions of Good Vibra­tions?
The com­pletist does and demands it. At the same time, it’s pos­si­ble to learn how each song devel­oped, how Brian Wil­son worked in the stu­dio and pos­si­bly to appre­ci­ate how dri­ven he was.
The last is hard. It’s why an engi­neer or pro­ducer can hear 100 takes of the same move­ment until he hears what he alone hears. With the Smile Ses­sions we get close to hear­ing what Brian Wil­son was hear­ing. It feels like a priv­i­lege
It also feels like enter­ing a time tun­nel. For what might have been regarded as avant garde then isn’t now. What would have been a chal­lenge in 1966 or 67 is dated now.
The humour that was impor­tant to Brian Wil­son was corny then, Cornier now. Then again, it was one of The Beach Boys’ endear­ing qual­i­ties.
See­ing Smile exposed is like solv­ing a mys­tery that might have been bet­ter left as a mys­tery.
Hav­ing the proof dimin­ishes a myth that had grown larger than the Smile Ses­sions pos­si­bly can be.
The lis­tener can make up their own mind.