Winning ‘Smile’

Spencer Patterson

Friday, Oct. 29, 2004 | 8:36 a.m.

For nearly four decades, the Beach Boys' "Smile" reigned as rock 'n' roll's most legendary unfinished album.

And for Brian Wilson, a source of constant pestering.

"Over the years, almost every other interview was, 'Well Brian, why did you dump "Smile?" Why did you dump Smile?'," Wilson said in a recent phone interview. "I did that for 38 years."

This year, the 62-year-old Wilson finally acquiesced, giving legions of fans that which they had all but given up on hearing: a completed version of "Smile," the record originally planned as the follow-up to 1966's classic "Pet Sounds."

Speaking from a hotel room in Houston on Saturday, Wilson said his wife of nine years, Melinda, finally convinced him to revisit the long-abandoned project.

"My wife told me about nine months ago that she thought the world was finally ready for 'Smile,' and I immediately agreed," Wilson said. "We listened to the old tapes and got refreshed, and then we took it from scratch."

Wilson's reworked "Smile" hit stores on Sept. 28, drawing immediate rave reviews, including a rare five-star rating from Rolling Stone magazine.

Today, Wilson is out on the road, performing "Smile" in its entirety, along with old favorites recorded by the Beach Boys, the band he, his brothers Carl and Dennis, his cousin Mike Love and high school chum Al Jardine founded in 1961.

On Saturday, Wilson's tour stops at Boulder Station's 600-seat Railhead. Doors open at 7 p.m. for the 8 p.m. performance.

Wilson road-tested his new-look "Smile" before he re-recorded it, performing it at London's Royal Festival Hall in February. The crowd's reaction told him all he needed to know about the music's appeal.

"We got a 10-minute standing ovation for 10 nights in a row," Wilson said, sounding far more alert than his reputation as a confused drug casualty would suggest. "People loved it."

Wilson hoped people would love "Smile" back in 1967, when he wrote its first two movements and began recording them with the Beach Boys.

It wasn't long, however, before he encountered resistance from his bandmates.

"Mike and Dennis thought it was inappropriate music for the Beach Boys," Wilson said. "He and Dennis go, 'What is this crap? What is this (expletive)?' And I'm going, 'It's good music.' And they go, 'No it's not. It's too spaced out for people, you know?' "

Indeed, by late-1966/early-1967 standards, "Smile" sounds a bit too psychedelic to have been taken seriously by mainstream music fans, particularly those accustomed to the Beach Boys' West Coast surf sound.

Of course, the Beatles changed the rock landscape with the June 1967 release of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," but by then Wilson had shelved "Smile" indefinitely.

Love, in Las Vegas recently for a Beach Boys performance, sounded confident the band had done the right thing abandoning "Smile."

"Musically, there was some brilliance to it, but I've always questioned some of the lyrical trends," Love said in an interview with the Sun. "Lyrically, I always try to think, 'OK, what does this mean?' And those lyrics didn't have any meaning to most humanoids because they were written under the influence of drugs. It was a little far out."

Several pieces intended for inclusion on the original "Smile" later turned up on future Beach Boys albums, including 1967's hastily assembled "Smiley Smile" ("Good Vibrations," "Heroes and Villians," "Vega-Tables"), 1969's "20/20" ("Our Prayer," "Cabin Essence") and 1971's "Surf's Up" ("Surf's Up").

Beach Boys devotees also discovered much of "Smile" through a series of unauthorized bootleg recordings that turned up over the years, including a coveted double-CD package issued by the Vigotone label in 1993.

With such tools at their disposal, hardcore fans began compiling their own "Smile" mix tapes and CDs, guessing as to what the content and running order of Wilson's finished product might have sounded like.

For his part, though, Wilson says he never understood why "Smile" came to be known as an underground masterpiece, some sort of musical Holy Grail.

"I was very surprised that people thought of it that way," Wilson said.

Wilson said he has never heard any "Smile" bootlegs, nor does he know how the original recordings leaked out. But when he started "Smile" anew, he was pleased to discover all the masters still in place.

"When we back to the vaults, we got all we needed," he said. "We found it all. But we didn't use anything. This is all from scratch."

Wilson reunited with lyricist Van Dyke Parks -- his collaborator during the creation of the original "Smile" -- then gathered a group of studio musicians and started recording.

"We had two movements written, and we wrote the third movement about five months ago," Wilson said. "We also resequenced it. It flows together like a river flows downhill. I mean, each little segment flows right into another segment."

Even casual fans might notice one significant difference: new lyrics for the disc-closing "Good Vibrations," one of the Beach Boys' most beloved tunes.

"Tony Asher wrote the original verse lyrics and Mike Love wrote some after him, so we used Mike Love's for, like, 38 years," Wilson said. "Then my wife said, 'Let's try Tony Asher's original lyrics to just break up the monotony a little bit.' So that's what we did."

The familiar first verse for "Good Vibrations": "I, I love the colorful clothes she wears / And the way the sunlight plays upon her hair / I hear the sound of a gentle word / On the wind that lifts her perfume through the air."

And the remade version from "Smile.": "I, I love the colorful clothes she wears / And she's already workin' on my brain / I, I only looked in her eyes / But I picked up something I just can't explain."

Satisfied with his new "Smile," Wilson has some bad news for Beach Boys fans still hoping for an official release of the original "Smile" sessions.

"No, never," he replied when asked if he might ever issue that material. "This 'Smile' is the only one we'll ever do."

Wilson sounded proud of the reception September's "Smile" has received, with Web sites such as www.rateyourmusic.com already ranking it the year's best album. He admitted, though, that revisiting the project forced him to look back on some difficult times in his life.

"It brought back a lot of good memories, but unfortunately it also brought back some bad drug memories," Wilson said. "We were taking some really screwed-up drugs, so we were all messed up in our minds."

Performing "Smile" has been a pleasant experience for Wilson, however, particularly after he recently played the emotional "Pet Sounds" in concert for a stint.

"It was an emotional experience, 'Pet Sounds,' for me and for other people," Wilson said. "But 'Smile' is a happier, more jovial experience. That's why I like it better. It's more fun to perform it live."

With "Smile" finally off his to-do list, Wilson will also have one less nagging question to answer.

Perhaps with that in mind, he hinted at a possible next undertaking, the mere mention of which should create a significant buzz of its own.

"After the U.S. tour we're going to Australia for a couple of weeks," Wilson said. "And when we come back we might record a rock 'n' roll album with Paul McCartney. Does that sound good for just an idea?"

Absolutely, provided it doesn't take 38 years to finish.