After
years of wrestling with depression and drug abuse Brian revives
a buried musical masterpiece from 37 years ago.
His doubts now gone, the former Beach Boy has revived
and reshaped the songs and with it, his life. There's
no surf, no sand, no little deuce coupes and only a
couple of California girls in sight of the North
Hollywood recording studio. Inside, the 61-year-old
architect of "Good Vibrations," "Surfin'
U.S.A." and "Fun, Fun, Fun" sits
stoically at his keyboard, surrounded by a small army
of musicians, and stares into one of two video
monitors. Song lyrics crawl across the screens as the
other performers, most of whom weren't born when Brian
Wilson's songs topped the charts four decades ago,
serve up the densely layered vocal harmonies and
rainbow of instrumental colors that his compositions
require.
Wilson frequently looks away from the monitors and
occasionally switches them off, but likes them nearby
as a safety net. Who can blame him? The songs he's
working on aren't the familiar rock hits he created
with the Beach Boys, those relentlessly sunny tunes
that painted a fantasy of Southern California life as
an endless summer of perfect waves, hot rods and blond
beauties. Instead, he's putting the finishing touches
on a work he dreamed up 38 years ago, at the height of
his creative rivalry with the Beatles.
After years of wrestling with depression and drug and
alcohol abuse, after half a lifetime of trying to
forget his fabled lost masterwork, Wilson can smile
again."This feels so good," he says to a
reporter when the session is over. "
So good
I can't believe it." Tonight, he'll unveil
"Smile" at a concert in England, where fans
have long accorded him the heroic status that
Americans reserved for the Beatles. Paul McCartney is
expected to join him on stage during at least one of
six sold-out shows at London's Royal Festival Hall.
Over the next three weeks, Wilson will give 16
"Smile" concerts in Britain, Germany,
Belgium, the Netherlands and France. He plans a U.S.
tour in the fall to coincide with the CD release of
the newly recorded work. To tens of thousands of pop
fans, Wilson's completion of "Smile" is no
less exhilarating than the discovery of a completed
manuscript for Schubert's "Unfinished"
Symphony would be to classical music scholars."I
can hardly wait," says Rick Rubin, a producer who
has worked with acts ranging from Johnny Cash and Tom
Petty to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Beastie
Boys.
Wilson, his hair now streaked with gray but still
thick and full, has been touring regularly since 1998,
something many pop fans never thought they'd see,
given his history of emotional instability. Now
they'll get the music that most never dreamed they
would hear.
The Beatles' Rivals
Wilson was 24 when he went to work on the album he
conceived as "a teenage symphony to God."
Originally to be called "Dumb Angel" to
reflect its themes of humor and spirituality, it was
retitled "Smile." It was 1966, and a string
of more than two dozen hit singles and 10 hit albums
had made the Beach Boys, a band from Hawthorne, the
most popular American group and the Beatles' chief
rivals atop the sales charts. Pop music was going
through a transformation in which the album was
supplanting the three-minute single as the dominant
format. Wilson has long said he felt a sense of
artistic competitiveness with the Fab Four. Each group
has acknowledged the influence of the other. The
Beatles' 1965 album "Rubber Soul" inspired
Wilson to move beyond the teen simplicity of the Beach
Boys' early work to the musical maturity and emotional
expressiveness of 1966's "Pet Sounds." The
ambitions of "Pet Sounds" helped spur the
Beatles to new heights in their next album,
"Revolver." Wilson was determined to top his
rivals again with "Smile." He promised it
would be as much of a progression over "Pet
Sounds" as that was over its predecessor,
"Beach Boys Party!" "Smile" was
expected at the end of 1966 — while the Beatles were
working on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
Band." Immediately after "Pet Sounds,"
Wilson created the band's most intricately crafted
recording, "Good Vibrations," a song
intended for "Smile." It became the Beach
Boys' biggest hit up to that time, proof that there
was a market for Wilson's increasingly sophisticated
music.
Wilson's further evolution with
"Smile" stemmed from his
collaboration with Van Dyke Parks, a
Mississippi-born singer, songwriter, pianist,
arranger and producer who had moved to
Southern California in the 1950s. Parks
brought a strong literary sensibility to the
lyrics he wrote for "Smile," which
he and Wilson envisioned as a work rooted in
American history, culture and musical
vernacular. It was to contain doses of
comic-book humor reflecting the whimsicality
of the dawning psychedelic age. (Jimi Hendrix
once described what he'd heard of
"Smile" as the music of "a
psychedelic barbershop quartet.") But
Parks' impressionistic lyrics led to
dissension among the Beach Boys. Mike Love,
the band's front man during concerts, was
particularly sensitive to pleasing fans and
found Parks' lyrics obscure. Other band
members worried that "Smile's"
musical sophistication wouldn't translate into
radio hits. By then, Wilson had left behind
the simple three-chord pop song in favor of
careening melodies, unconventional chord
progressions and shifting sonic textures.
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Brian
Wilson, left, and Mike Love perform
with the Beach Boys at the Hollywood
Bowl in 1963. The original
"Smile" album was derailed
in part because Love found the lyrics
obscure.
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Complicating the picture, the group was attempting
to start its own label, Brother Records. As part of
that move, the band sued Capitol Records. Capitol
printed nearly half a million "Smile" album
covers, anticipating the arrival of a master tape in
fall 1966. But Wilson, working in the studio while the
other Beach Boys were on tour, missed deadline after
deadline as he continued polishing his work. Lack of
support from his band mates was a factor in the delay.
But he also was feeling stress from the lawsuit and
the weight of his responsibility for ensuring the
livelihood of the ever-expanding Beach Boys family —
on top of an ongoing struggle with his domineering,
abusive and jealous father, Murry. The final blow came
in June 1967 with the release of "Sgt. Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band." Wilson had been bested
by his rivals, and he scrapped "Smile." The
band later came out with a watered-down version called
"Smiley Smile," a faint echo of Wilson's
original vision.
Myth Versus Fact
The fate of "Smile" has become legend.
Although most of the world never heard the album,
several influential musicians and journalists were
allowed into some of the recording sessions in late
1966 and early 1967. The idea that rock music might be
considered art rather than merely entertainment was in
its infancy. Yet no less an authority than Leonard
Bernstein expressed admiration for the sophistication
of "Surf's Up," one of "Smile's"
cornerstone tracks, played for him as part of a CBS
News documentary about a new generation of musicians.
Unlike the guessing game often played with legendary
rockers who died prematurely — what music might
Hendrix, Buddy Holly or Jim Morrison have made had
they lived longer? — the fantasizing over
"Smile" is based on more than wishful
thinking. Most of the album's songs had been recorded
by the time Wilson abandoned the project. For years
they lay dormant; reel upon reel of tape waiting to be
stitched together and brought to life by their
creator. Eventually, tantalizing bits and pieces
surfaced, officially and unofficially. Books and
countless articles have been written about Wilson's
masterwork, and the theorizing has raged on via the
Internet. One enterprising group in Europe came up
with "Project Smile," a CD-ROM containing
all the existing bits and pieces of the work,
circulated for free among users worldwide. That
do-it-yourself approach had been the closest
possibility to a completed version, because Wilson
long refused to even discuss it. "Until about
three years ago, you couldn't even mention 'Heroes and
Villains' to Brian," Wilson biographer David Leaf
said, referring to another key song from
"Smile." Leaf is making a film documentary
about the completion of the album.
But Wilson's attitude changed after the enthusiastic
fan response to his performance of "Heroes and
Villains" at a 2001 all-star tribute to his music
in New York. He has not simply dusted off songs
intended for "Smile." He has reunited with
lyricist Parks to structure the disparate pieces into
a fully developed three-movement pop suite and craft a
few new lyrics and musical links.
Out of the Darkness
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Brian
Wilson credits his wife, Melinda, with
helping to give him the emotional
security to revisit the album that for
more than three decades he considered
a "mistake."
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Wilson says he was able to revisit perhaps the darkest
chapter of his past because "I have emotional
security." He gets it from his wife of nine years,
Melinda, the three children they've adopted, a team of
doctors from UCLA that has diagnosed and helped him manage
his depression, and a sympathetic group of musicians whose
goal is to aid Wilson in realizing his musical vision.
After failing to deliver "Smile," the Beach Boys
continued to produce acclaimed albums, but ceased to be a
commercial force in pop music. Wilson retreated from the
world, and his musical output slowed to a trickle. Melinda
Wilson believes that he was in the grip of a depression
that went undiagnosed and untreated. "Like many
people with depression who don't get proper treatment, he
tried to medicate himself with drugs," she says. His
first wife, Marilyn, brought in Hollywood psychologist
Eugene Landy to help Wilson in the 1970s. Landy lived 24
hours a day with Wilson, recommended medication (provided
by one of Landy's associates who was an M.D.) and
interceded in the Beach Boys artistic and business
decisions.
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The band members and Wilson's relatives grew
alarmed when Wilson rewrote his will to make Landy the
main beneficiary. They filed suit against Landy,
contending that the psychologist had taken over
Wilson's life. In 1991, a judge put the songwriter's
affairs under the control of a court-appointed
conservator. Melinda describes her husband's path back
to "Smile" as consisting of many "baby
steps." It started with his resumption of concert
appearances in 1998, followed by a more ambitious tour
in 2000 in which he and his new band performed
"Pet Sounds" in its entirety. Now, he says,
at least privately to Melinda, the album he had
formerly written off as "a mistake" is
"the best work I've ever done." It's not
intended as a reconstruction of the album the world
should have heard 37 years ago. "It's the way I
feel about the music now," Wilson says. And how
does he feel about it now? "I think it's
perfect."
Wilson talks about his music haltingly, at times
giving clipped responses of "yes,"
"no" or "I can't answer that
question"; at others offering simplistic-sounding
explanations. (Asked how he and Parks composed
"Wonderful," a "Smile" song that
dazzles musicologists because it abandons the
conventional notion of key signature, he says,
"We did it through concentration.") Such
comments reflect his inherent shyness, Melinda says.
But the impression that develops over the course of
two interviews is that what he feels about his music is
the music and that verbal explanations are, for
Wilson, redundant.
Wilson doesn't appear concerned, nor does anyone in
his entourage, that after 3 1/2 decades of analysis
and debate, rumor and speculation, the myth will
overshadow the music. "It's so far beyond what I
would have imagined it could be," guitarist
Jeffrey Foskett says after a complete run-through of
"Smile" at rehearsal. "The way I see it
is that the Beach Boys' first 10 albums made them
stars, 'Pet Sounds' made them great, and 'Smile' made
Brian Wilson a legend. I just hope that in completing
this, it gives him peace and lets him put this behind
him after all these years." In one of "Pet
Sounds' " directly autobiographical songs, Wilson
sang, "I guess I just wasn't made for these
times." Now, he says, "I think the time is
right."
