Wouldn’t It Be Nice If We Were Older?

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The New York Sun

As a child of the 1980s, I knew the Beach Boys only as the pathetic touring act that brought its tired surf pop to the local fairgrounds each year. (My parents got free tickets from the local car dealership.) They were a sorry spectacle, singing their paeans to youth’s endless summer – and hitting on the local cheerleaders who joined them on stage for “Be True to Your School” – well into the autumn of their lives. The graying, floral-print pop act had erased all evidence of the innovative band that had once been the only serious rival – in promise and popularity – to the Beatles.


The difference between the Beach Boys I saw then and the Beach Boys I discovered later is Brian Wilson, the troubled mastermind who retreated from the band, and the rest of the world, at the close of the 1960s. At the height of his powers in that decade, Wilson was an American pop talent without equal – Charles Ives with sand between his toes and surf crashing in his ears. He single-handedly revolutionized what was thought possible in the recording studio and had an incalculable effect on the shape of pop music to come.


The reason Wilson was unknown to me then is that his legacy rests as much on the album he didn’t release as those he did. The story of “Smile,” Wilson’s long-unrealized opus, is well documented. His already-drug-strained psyche collapsed under the pressure (self-imposed) of trying to match – and beat to the punch – the complex weirdness of the Beatles “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and the opposing pressure (outwardly imposed) to continue pumping out simple, candied pop hits.


As the recording of “Smile” dragged on (eventually it ran to more than 80 sessions), Wilson’s behavior became increasingly erratic. He forced his collaborators to wear fireman’s hats in the studio. He held fully clothed meetings in the pool. In August 1967, just weeks after the Beatles released “Sgt. Pepper’s,” Wilson abandoned his self-described “teenage symphony to God.”


Though alternate versions and bits and pieces of the songs emerged over the years, it looked as though “Smile” would remain a half-written page in rock history. Wilson wouldn’t come near it – until 2001,when he unexpectedly included the “Smile” song “Heroes and Villains” in a television performance. Other “Smile” songs soon followed, and in 2003 he announced that he would perform the album in its entirety with his backing band.


But first he had to complete it.


With some handholding and delicate tugging from keyboardist/”musical secretary” Darian Sahanaja, Wilson immersed himself in the old material again and re-enlisted the help of original “Smile” lyricist Van Dyke Parks. He debuted “Smile” in its entirety in February 2004 at the Royal Festival Hall in London, where it was greeted with a 10-minute standing ovation. (New Yorkers will get to hear it live at Carnegie Hall October 13) And today, the “greatest unreleased album in history” finally gets its release.


The evolution of the Beach Boys between their landmark album “Pet Sounds” and “Smile” is every bit as dramatic as the contemporaneous one the Beatles underwent between “Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper’s.” Wilson has explained it this way: “I smoked pot for ‘Pet Sounds,’ and we smoked hashish for ‘Smile.’ “


“Smile” is the American “Sgt. Pepper’s”: Just as odd and nearly as inventive, it constantly changes mood and shape. On it, Wilson no longer addresses himself just to the narrow stretch of sand along the Pacific Coast, but to the country as a whole, from “Roll Plymouth Rock” to “In Blue Hawaii.” None of it, though, is very direct: Parks’s lyrics are just this side of total nonsense.


For those familiar with the previously released versions of “Smile” songs, the first temptation is to compare the old and new (or is it old and older?) versions. Indulge it: It makes for fascinating listening.


The new “Heroes and Villains” is slightly zanier than the one that appeared on 1967’s “Smiley Smile.” Wilson’s voice is grittier now, less energized, but the fidelity is better and the music is just as ecstatic. The popping vocal bell choir of the original is now complemented with an assortment of horns, Queen like cascading vocals, and a clip-clopping horse sound at the end.


The same formula diminishes “Vegetables” (now called “Vega-Tables”). The simplicity of the original – a bouncing bass, pouring water, honking organ, crunching vegetables for percussion – better suits the whimsical song about health and fitness. And Wilson’s aged voice is no match for Al Jardine’s youthful one.


Wilson doesn’t tinker much with “Good Vibrations” (he spent six months working on the original), but he totally overhauls and revitalizes “Wind Chimes.” Where the “Smiley Smile” version was melted and nightmarish, the song now has a Polynesian vibe – thanks to the addition of a vibraphone – and builds to a gorgeous pop crescendo.


Having satisfied that curiosity, the way to hear the rest of the album is as a single statement, a unified whole. Many of the tracks are little more than a minute or two in length: mood pieces and connective tissue rather than fully realized songs. “Barnyard” is mostly pretty “oohs” and animal sounds. “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow,” a purely instrumental track, sounds like a Wonderland attempt at heavy metal.


Despite the long work stoppage and the impossibly high expectations, “Smile” holds together remarkably well. And if it sounds this good today, imagine how it might of sounded – with the fresh voices and full talents of all the Beach Boys – in 1966 or 1967.


It sets up an interesting counterfactual. If “Smile” had come out as originally planned, might it have been Wilson and the Beach Boys who ushered in the psychedelic age, rather than the Beatles? We’ll never know, but it’s safe to say that I probably would not have seen them at the fair.


The New York Sun

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