What would have happened to SMiLE outtakes/scraps had the album been finished?

[Ang Jones]

I find it very hard, as someone on whom the music has had such an effect, to imagine that SMiLE would not have made a great impact had it been released in 1967. The modular construction of it means that it is possible to juggle with it and sequence it in a variety of ways and perhaps that still would have been done. What  George Martin did with the Love album, BB fans had been doing with SMiLE for ages and would perhaps have done it anyway.

[thorgil]

Smile would have been surely cheered and cherished by musicophiles in all the world, and would have inspired many musicians, but I doubt it would have been a big global success with the general public, or would have steered pop/rock music away from its course. As for now, it would probably be a contender with Pet Sounds for best album ever.

But, what I really think is that Smile was "the amazing album too wonderful to be heard", how it was defined in a review of the Good Vibrations box.

[GhostyTMRS]

My guess would be that the same events would likely have occurred. Brian would've retreated as he did (a hit record wouldn't have cured his mental illness) and the Beach Boys probably would've bolstered their albums going forward with trinkets from SMiLE to make it appear Brian was more involved.

Do the session tapes up to May 1967 sound like a man who retreated due to mental illness? He's in full control and recording specific parts in the studio.

Whatever happened in late May/early June '67 when the Beach Boys returned home from a tour that saw them pummeled in the press for their live sound...according to Nick Grillo it was wham/bunk/shush within a week or so they're hauling rented gear into Brian's living room to ease the personal issues and start working on recordings. That's the fascinating part of the story to me. You have to separate the music in some of these theories, and in this case, listen to the session tapes. There is always the defense put forth of the band's possible resistance to the music as "they sang every note they were asked", so in this case listen to the music Brian was making right up to mid-May 1967 and listen to him running the sessions with studios full of musicians, and that's proof he was musically "there" in the recording studio as he had been before. It's not loopy, it's not disjointed, it's the same kind of MO at those sessions in May 67 heard on tape as they were a year earlier. It was after the band got back from Europe that the whole situation changed radically.  

Agreed, and the idea that Brian was a mess while recording those sessions is annihilated just by listening to the recordings, but I didn't say he would immediately retreat in this fantasy scenario we've concoted, because alas he didn't in real life, but going forward the onset of his mental illness (as artfully depicted in the "Love & Mercy" film) was already well underway and would've eventually affected the group, his career and (more importantly) his life and the story of the band would've continued as it did (without the benefit of resurrecting "Surf's Up" for the album in 1971..who knows? Maybe we'd have a record called "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" instead?).
Let's say SMiLE comes out in January 1967, the guys are totally into it and it's a smash (well...probably a bigger smash in the U.K as those things tended to go) he still would've had to deal with his mental illness going undiagnosed for years, Landy or someone like him stepping in, etc.    

I think the story is indeed in the recordings, even post-Smile and especially into fall 1967.

Apart from Smile, a fascinating "what if?" is "Time To Get Alone"...the work Brian was doing with Redwood who easily was Brother Records' most promising potential label find. TTGA is full-on, fully involved Brian working the studio with a brilliant song and quite a few of the Smile production hallmarks fully intact, only perhaps in a more commercial setting with a sweet sounding song. Then there is Darlin, a hell of a song and a groove, also slated for Redwood. Brian was still cutting these kinds of records, using session musicians and pro studios like his new replacement for Western 3, Wally Heider's "3", only not cutting them with the Beach Boys. And even Wild Honey, after Brian cut the title track, a lot more of that record was cut at the "pro" studio than a lot of fans realize.

So did he retreat? The Beach Boys effectively put an end to Brian producing Redwood, they didn't want him to do it, and said they needed him back producing their record instead. Which he did. And going into 1968, the home studio was more permanently in place and ready to go, and there he was making the Friends album. So he didn't really retreat then, either - He was back making Friends in his home studio. It was the period after Friends when the "retreat" is more noticeable, especially in the music.

Ah, but we're talking about a fantasy scenario where, as I said, SMiLE comes out in January 1967, all the guys are into it, it becomes a well-received record, etc. I doubt Redwood even happens. Wouldn't Brian be motivated and already hard at work on a follow-up album to top what he'd just unleashed on the world? My point was that his undiagnosed schizo-affective disorder had already appeared and no doubt would've gotten worse, as it did in real life, as the years went on without the proper medication.