What if "Smile" had failed?

[Mahalo]

I chalk it up to fate.....

[pixletwin]

I chalk it up to fate.....

exactly. Sort of like Mozart's Requiem. I think it was destined to be imcomplete. In the end, maybe SMiLE was destined to be incomplete until BWPS.

[Jay]

2) "Smile" doesn't come out in 1967, and in 2004, ...The audience reaction is general bewilderment and confusion at the strange lyrics,

I think the odds of that being the reason for a 2004 audience not liking it were slim-to-none. Remember, the bulk of those lyrics had been in the BW fans' possession for 35+ years. There is nothing strange about them now (if there was then). A more likely scenario for why BW fans would have disliked it in 2004 would've been the sequencing, the sampled harpsichord and tack piano, the Walusko pirate-rap and the suspicion that Brian didn't really do all that much of it in 2004.

Oh wait, those are the reasons the people who didn't like it DID give for not liking it.

(I liked it. Both old recordings and released BWPS.)

Ok, let's say that from 1967 to 2004, NOTHING from Smile had been heard by the public. Nothing from future beach boys albums. Also, not one single bootleg of one single strain of Smile music had been heard by anybody outside of the beach boys. Let's say that the 2004 premeire of Smile had been the first time that the audience had heard the "strange" lyrics, and everybody hated it. What would have happened?

[Dr. Tim]

I guess the hard part of that hypothetical is "everybody hating it" (the lyrics or the whole thing?) in 2004.  Presumably Brian would still have his solo career (or there'd be no forum to premiere it in concert).   Its failure would probably sting and he would probably hang up doing anything new with anybody, but he would still do the oldies shows, perhaps aping the Mike/Bruce only-the-hits format.

Here are my own musings from the remembering Carl thread ("It Was 10 years ago...") about what could have happened if, as someone suggested, Carl lived and persuaded Brian to finish Smile, maybe helping him.  The scenarios aren't all that rosy:

The idea that Carl would help Brian in a finished “Smile” is a nice dream, but remember the family history is more turbulent and many darker scenarios would have been possible.  Peter Carlin tells us, for example, that it was Carl who nixed the idea of touring “Pet Sounds” live initially, thinking Brian would either bail on it or stink.  He makes an interesting case that one step in the completion of “Smile” was that Brian ended up being the last Wilson standing and thus was free to act – and reclaim his music to perform his way - without the old family baggage.  [Discuss, if you dare].

But other things might have happened:
(1)   Carl, Al and Mike keep the touring BB going.  It makes enough money they don’t need Brian.  Feeling left out, he stays home and sulks. The chances of Brian going out on his own?  50-50 at best, though he might enjoy a quiet retirement as his health improves.  Either way, “Smile” would take too much energy to contemplate.
(2)   Brian goes out on his own anyway, to the considerable resentment of the others.  They sue to stop him “diluting” the BB name and catalog, because obviously he’s being billed as Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, not Brian Wilson of the One-ders.  Even if the suit fails, the fact that they did it takes the wind out of his sails and he gives up.  No solo career, no “Smile.”
(3)   Brian and the touring BB go their separate ways for a while.  Carl and Al eventually fall out with Mike and Bruce, and they try to recruit Brian to retrieve the BB “legacy”.  The two factions sue each other over who gets to use the BB name.  Much unpleasantness in court and the BRI board room. Maybe a painful compromise is worked out a la the various editions of “Drifters” and “Coasters” performing groups.  The resulting waste of effort and money saps everybody’s energy to do anything new – so no “Smile”.
(4)   Same as (3), but Al goes off on his own toot and three factions go at it instead of two.  Rinse, Lather, Repeat.
(5)   Assume none of the foregoing: instead, years later,Brian, with encouragement from Carl, starts talking about finishing “Smile”.  Now it has more of a BB cachet since two Wilsons are working on it, even if it’s billed as a Brian project.  Mike won’t have this, and this time he moves quicker, suing to enjoin the completion of “Smile” as anything other than a BB project, since that is what it originally was supposed to be (he says).  He might consent to its going ahead with him having an equal share and an equal say in the final product.  That demand kills the project, as all the squabbling from 1966 is resurrected in all its horror all over again.

 Not so easy making these predictions after all, is it?  Not that mine are any more on-the-mark than anyone else's.

[kshane]

I think that there's one crucial thing that no one is addressing in this discussion. What if the Beach Boys had played Monterey in 1967, as they were scheduled to do? That could have changed everything. If they had chosen to include SMiLE material in their set, there's no doubt that it would have been embraced by the counter-culture audience in attendance, giving the Beach Boys new credibility among people who to that point didn't really give them much credence. Not only that, but they then could have appeared in the subsequent D.A. Pennebaker film, which of course was a huge success, and ignited the careers of Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, and Janis Joplin, among others.

I was sixteen years old in 1967, and I think that people were much more open to new music than they are today. Not only was there Sgt. Pepper's that year, but music by The Doors, the Jefferson Airplane, and other more adventurous bands was gaining traction. SMiLE was already a much discussed album before it was abandoned. All of this leads me to believe it would have been a big seller in that era.

In my mind, it's the failure of the band to make the appearance at Monterey that changed everything.

[pixletwin]

In my mind, it's the failure of the band to make the appearance at Monterey that changed everything.

I think you are right about that. There was a definite backlash against the Beach Boys by the underground press of the time as a result of pulling out of the Monterey Pop Festival. No doubt about it.