The Smiley Smile Message Board

doesn't it?

With all that Smile was going to be 'about', doesn't it being unfinished just add another level to the whole thing? And i don't just mean for BB-nerds to obsess over, but it ties in thematically.

"I know there's answer but I have to find it by myself." Perhaps Smile in its purest form is too much to be available in a shop for sale, and the best way to distribute the message is via "dealers" (i.e. boot-dealers, and now, in the 21st C, the internet).

To hear Smile, you must first seek it out, which is a quest in itself.

I agree completely! SMiLE could never have been, because then it would have had to been something rather than ANYthing. Can anybody really imagine just going to the store and picking up a used copy of SMiLE for 6 bucks? Not BWPS, but SMiLE by the Beach Boys.
The SMiLE we have is like the Magnificent Ambersons we have, incomplete and slapped together.
Or it's like the 1200 ton stone slab abandoned in the quarry it was carved from in baalbek lebanon thousands of years ago (look it up).
Anyway, I tend to think SMiLE is exactly what it was meant to be.

I fondly remember my own excitement every single time I got to hear yet another one of those mysterious pieces, be it Cabinessence on the Friends/20/20 twofer or just one more version of Heroes And Villains that revealed one precious little snippet you hadn't heard anywhere else.

Before the European Smile shows I attended, my personal favorite among many great Smile moments has to be the first time I got to hear the DJ Mic Luv mix (must've been in the late summer of 2003). Unlike any assemblage that I had heard before, this one made such perfect sense to me that I initially thought this was the real deal, the original Smile, as conceived by Brian Wilson, finally unearthed in all its glory.

I see nothing positive that resulted from SMiLE being unfinished.

I'm sort of in that same boat. I think it's a musical tragedy that it was never finished. And as much as I love BWPS, it isn't SMiLE. It's what SMiLE is now, but not the real SMiLE. For some reason it doesn't move me like the original stuff, which is kind of weird because it's the same music. I dunno, maybe because I kind of worry that the reality is that Darian had more input than we like to think.
 There just isn't that....I don't know, it doesn't move me like the original stuff. Maybe because there's some sort of romance involved, it was all such a secret for so long. It's almost like the new stuff is too clean. Not to say the Wrecking Crew weren't the sh*t- because they were- but the new versions are too perfect. I don't know, I just remember the first time I heard SMiLE material it's like it jumped out of the speaker and grabbed me, it changed the way I look at music.  I don't know if I would have felt the same way if I had heard SMiLE for the first time by listening to BWPS.

I completely agree...I hate to sound like I'm dissing BWPS, because I do enjoy it and I'm happy Brian did it.  But like you said, the original sessions are just in a league of their own.  I had that same feeling the first time I heard the original Smile material.  It floored me.  Not just the music, but the voices, the vibe, everything.  I don't get the same feelings when I listen to BWPS.

Musical tragedy is probably the most accurate way to put it.  Smile's non-release altered the course of music history, as well as that of the Beach Boys themselves.  We all know the severity of the fallout.  So I find it really difficult to accept the idea that anything good came from the loss of Smile.

And human tragedy....

Well, I simply don't accept that SMiLE's  non-release was a negative thing. The group, after all, seemed to come together more as the result of the loss of SMiLE. Also, I don't see how it NOT appearing altered the course of anything but the tower's marketing scheme. SMiLE is the most beautiful music I've ever heard and has definitely affected my life in an extremely positive way since I first heard cabin-essence twenty-some years ago. The first few SMile boots were magical presents from some lost civilization. Part of it's magic is the mystery of how incomplete it is. until recently even BW thought SMiLE was fine as is, a relic of the past. Still, I'll take a 10 cd box set of smile anyday.

Makes me think of those sci fi stories where someone goes back in time and intends to alter just one event but ends up causing a chain reaction of events that alters the course of history.


What might ensue if we we went back and finished SMiLE?  I shudder to think!!!

Well, I simply don't accept that SMiLE's  non-release was a negative thing. The group, after all, seemed to come together more as the result of the loss of SMiLE. Also, I don't see how it NOT appearing altered the course of anything but the tower's marketing scheme. SMiLE is the most beautiful music I've ever heard and has definitely affected my life in an extremely positive way since I first heard cabin-essence twenty-some years ago. The first few SMile boots were magical presents from some lost civilization. Part of it's magic is the mystery of how incomplete it is. until recently even BW thought SMiLE was fine as is, a relic of the past. Still, I'll take a 10 cd box set of smile anyday.
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Well put!

Personally, I'll take 20/20, Sunflower, Surf's Up any day over Smile!

Heresy? Perhaps

But not really! Those are Beach Boys albums, whereas Smile is something else.

I love it, but it doesn't really represent what I love about the Beach Boys all that much and I find no reason to have to fit it in among what they gave us!

Smile was never released.

Brian's 2004 Smile is something else. It's 40 years later with other guys with different voices and a diffwerent vibe. I bought it and love it, but it's not The Beach Boys.

I really love the Smile music. But there is a lot of the cynicism in me that says it's just an album--or rather, would have been. A great album, maybe, but has its reputation really suffered much, being regarded as one of the most mythical pieces of pop ever? Who knows ... if there is a tragedy around it, it's any personal ones. And those are hard for us to judge anyway. It's just hard to get too worked up about, I guess. Don't get me wrong, it's interesting. But to quote the late Freddie Mercury, "it's just a bloody rock 'n' roll record--people take these things so seriously."

one sad thing about all of it, i think,  is that the average joe who just hears of smile in passing and buys it out of curiosity is going to be buying BWPS and taking as "Smile", which isn't accurate. I'm lucky becaus I first became interested in Smile before BWPS and discovered it through slowly uneathing all those brillant original recordings. I'd hate to think of the people who discover Smile thesedays via book, article, documentary, etc and expect it to be all that it is written to be and then the dissappointment they must feel when they go out and buy BWPS. Not to bring BWPS down too much, it is what it is, and for what it is it's great, BUT it is not the original and as has already been stated i agree that it just simply lacks the magic of the original. Carl's beautiful vocals on Cabin Essence, Brian on Surf's Up, etc. My room mate is a huge music buff and had never even heard of smile and after I built it up to him he was really excited to hear it and I made the mistake of playing him BWPS because i figured it would be the simplest introduction...needless to say he hated it. He said "that's none of the things you said it was" but after i convinced him to give purple chicks smile 2 or 3 listens he was hooked. It's safe to say that he listens to smile era music now as much if not more than i do.

Good post, Rocky. I feel the same way. That was my biggest disappointment, too. I wished that Brian would've left BWPS as a live performance; record THAT if you want to and release it. But, when they made it into a studio recording and Brian proclaimed, "We finished it", well, that still stings. Like you said, now THAT becomes the final document; the SMiLE songs deserved better. Am I getting too serious, Freddie?

So, does that make Loaf's thread title incorrect, or is it a Freudian slip, or a fraudian slip....

(Freddie, like Frankie, says relax.  :lol )

I do.  Smiley, Wild Honey, and Friends are three of my favorites.  I do like Smile better, but I wouldn't want to be without those three.


I think that's the exact plot of Lewis Shiner's Glimpses.  Has anyone read that book?  I've always wondered how it is. 

I actually sold my CD copy of BWPS.  Part of the reason was that artwork bothered me.  For me, Frank Holmes' stuff was, is, and always will be an indispensable part of Smile.

The other thing is that the studio recording seems a bit sterile.  I much prefer listening to BWPS live at Carnegie Hall.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4182988

BTW, I first got interested in Smile when the 1993 box set came out.  At the time, I owned (and loved) Pet Sounds. I remember being intrigued by the reviews of the then-new box set.   I was a poor student at the time, though, and the box set was something like $70 at Tower (this was before Amazon.com).   However, in one of those magic Smile moments that only folks around here might appreciate, I found an orphaned Disc 2 of the box (i.e., the disc covering 1965-66, including Smile tracks) among the used CDs at the Wherehouse.  It was priced at $4... Yes, four bucks!!!  No idea how or why someone would have parted with just one disc from the box-- let alone the disc that was the centerpiece of the whole project-- but I choose to believe that the minor miracle was meant for me personally.

I quite like the 'unfinished' characteristic. Of course it would not have been: 'just another album', had it been readied at the time. It would have cast a huge shadow over all that would have followed, that is for sure.

The 'unfinished' thing for me is much the same that I love in reggae, esp. authentic dub reggae. I am still trying to piece together sort of a comprehensive Lee Perry collection, whilst knowing that I won't ever be able to get everything the man ever did. The man worked in a tiny shack in Jamaica, blazing hot. He only had a 4 track Teac machine, a mixing desk, and a couple of pedals. And a phaser. That phaser was something else...

Money was tight. Lee was on a combination of Guinness and ganja all day. Yet in 1978, he managed to contract the total cream of the crop of Jamaica's musicians and singers for a few sessions. And a trio by the name of the Congoes. The record, when it reached Europe in its JA form, was a sensation for the few who could track it down, including yours truly. Heavenly singing, backing, a bass sound to kill for, and Perry's otherworldly production, sort of a deep sea sound. Voices and instruments alternatively shifting in focus and then out of it again, making room for another part of the total sound.

(if you can, try to sample it, or buy it 2nd hand on the Blood and Fire label (sadly defunct). Their edition is the real job, including every track and dub done at the time).

But lots of the charm of Perry is that quest: searching, looking, browsing, and perhaps finding. Sometimes you know that the dub version of a track has been lost, e.g. in the time that Perry simply set fire to his own recording shack in a fit of paranoia, he thought ghosts and devils were out for him.

Which, perhaps, illustrates that there are parallels between Perry and BW.

That's a great, serendipitous story!

It's interesting to read this thread and see both points. It was well put that it could be
considered thematically consistent and appropriate that the original album never reached
fruition.

That is a unified, zen-like concept that is as legitimate as the other view, that it
is a tragic, unbelievably tantalizing loss that it was never assembled and released, with
Brian plumbing the heights of his brilliance and determination and incorporating every
short but significant and incomparably beautiful and ethereal fragment (i.e. tag to vegetables)
that we all love but were left off BWPS (which I totally agree is a miracle and stands on its own
merits but doesn't possess the indefinable, magical atmosphere of the original recordings),
in a methodical, coherent, expansive full realization of his concept that would have stood
out like a shining star of idiosyncratic, visionary creativity in its 1967 context.

Sad, to so many, but possibly its inevitable, unavoidable and yes, cosmically appropriate fate.

The two ways of looking at it all are almost like matter and anti-matter or a double A-side, but
I'm in Sheriff's camp as far as the greater good that would have been served by its release
is concerned.

Then again, they say that everything happens for a reason, whatever will be, will be and
other seemingly trite but possibly true and profound aphorisms. :'( :) :-\

That's a really great book! it puts you right there, where many of us can vicariously imagine
what it would have been like to be the right person and voice of reason and perspective that,
in an ideal world, could have been the tipping point on the scale between motivation and
various obstacles that convinced him to persevere and finish the project (I realize that this
fantasy operates under many unrealistic assumptions that would have rendered it impractical,
even if one had been there and in a position of influence).

"Glimpses" is a clever concept, well executed. :3d

Only BW does not have his latest record produced by Andrew WK, for better or for worse.  :-D

I did not know that, just looked it up. Might be something special.

Well, it sure was going to be kind of special, yet Andrew WK allegedly took most of the tracks in an unfinished state and released them against Perry's wishes, only two of them being finished by the man himself. I've only heard one song of it myself, the album's first single, which should show up first if you type in 'Lee Perry' at youtube (edit: it's called, uhm, 'Pum Pum'). It does not exactly sound like Super Ape, more like the kind of tune that someone like Snoop Dogg might come up with in a reggae setting...

Ouch. that hurts. Something similar happened in Holland, in 1980. A Dutch cy. took a couple of unfinished Perry tracks, readied these for release, and it is probably the worst Perry album ever.
I had hoped for something like 'Time Boom X De Devil Dead', a superb hard-hitting LP he did with producer Adrian Sherwood.

I'm glad you like 'em. I do, too. But, those three albums literally killed the Beach Boys' career. Also, while Smiley Smile is a direct result of SMiLE not being finished, I see no connection between Wild Honey and Friends - and SMiLE not being finished. Brian could've gone that direction whether he finished SMiLE or not.

Just want to add that I didn't mean that it was a good thing that Smile went unfinished at the time (1967), but that in the position I am in now (Feb 2009, with my CDs and CDs of bootlegs and reading Bill Tobelman's website), that it being unfinished kind of makes sense to me, thematically.

The 'riddle' remains unanswered. :)

But it's fun to think about all of this.

I've always wondered about how true that is... Smiley Smile had "Heroes and Villains", a top 10 hit, Wild Honey had a top 20 hit and "Wild Honey" itself made it to about 30. "Friends"  just barely made the top 50, but then it was shortly followed by "Do It Again", another top 20 hit. All within about a year of SMiLE's collapse. So, although the BBs weren't enjoying the same level of success as before, they weren't doing that bad all things considered. Few bands would complain about having 5 songs in the top 50 in less than a year, including 3 top 20 hits. The next year, "I Can Hear Music" made it to about 25. 1970 was the first year they didn't have a song perform decently on the US charts, although "Cottonfields" was a big international hit. After that, it seems they decided the BBs softer image wasn't working out, and recorded Surf's Up and Carl & The Passions,  which got them some critical acclaim but little commercial success. Holland was their last gasp, with "Sail On Sailor" now being considered somewhat of a latter day hit, even though it didn't chart as high as "Friends"! So the downfall of the BBs career was more gradual than it might seem otherwise. What makes it look much worse is that people stopped buying the actual albums after "Barbara Ann", as the BBs got more associated with the novelty image of their earlier hits. Pet Sounds had some hits, but the album didn't sell all that well (especially when you consider the money that was probably put into the production of the album), so you could really say the BBs gradual fall started by about '66.  "Good Vibrations" was more of a fluke in retrospect, the perfect marriage between Brian's new arty approach to music making and the well-honed pop sensibilities of the Wilson/Love team. By SMiLE, the music was definitely more arty than pop, and it probably would have performed similarly to Pet Sounds - which is not much different then how Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, and Friends did. The BBs would have faded somewhat regardless of what happened.

I've got to go ahead and disagree with you Dada...chart hits are one thing, but I don't think they tell the whole story.  The band didn't completely disappear, but they fell from being one of the most recognized and popular groups in the world to virtually becoming an afterthought.  After Smile died (more specifically, after Monterey Pop), their careers as important record makers was over, as far as the general public was concerned.  It was a sharp decline, and they never recovered.

Of course this is all speculation, but had Smile been completed and released, I think it would have heavily altered the path of the group's career in the late '60s.  I think it would have brought them even more acclaim, and kept them on par with the Beatles.  If sales had been decent (which I think they would have been, as the public would have been used to the idea of the Beach Boys as a "serious" group by then), Brian would have come out with an even more unbounded confidence, and who knows what that would have produced?  Perhaps he wouldn't have slowly started to retreat from his position as leader of the group.  Obviously there would be no Smiley (which trust me, would make me sad too), and albums like Wild Honey and Friends may or may not exist in their present forms.  But in their place, we may very well have had even greater albums that we would love just as much.   

I guess what I'm saying is that I would be willing to lose Smiley, Wild Honey, and Friends (as much as I love them all) for a completed '67 Smile and whatever else that would have led to.

Yeah, Chris, although I didn't expand on what I posted, I feel pretty much the way you do. Again, I like Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, and Friends, so I'm not "blaming" them. But, after those albums (and 20/20) were released, the group's live audiences dropped drastically, the group was near bankruptcy, and their record company dropped them. It almost seems that, with the exception of the Endless Summer "spike", since 1967-68, the group was always struggling to re-prove themselves, get back to their previous 1964-66 superstar status, and basically have that mass appeal that they (sharing with The Beatles) once had. Isn't that the main reason they got Brian out of bed in 1976?

Remember though you are only speaking about the Beach Boys domestic sales. Wild Honey, 20/20. Cotton Fields etc kept the Beach Boys as one of the top groups of 1966-70 in Europe and even places like Japan. These albums deserved sales and praise it's just that they were unfairly concidered unhip here. Pet Sounds actually did alright, it went top ten had four top 40 songs two of them in the top ten, has been praised since the day it came out. Except for 15 Big Ones they never did better with new material ever again. Even the sucessful BWPS didn't sell nearly as much. It really didn't flop.

I have to disagree (in perhaps simplistic terms) in that "rock" music with strong blues roots overtook psychedelia and the innocent pop of The Beach Boys. The Beatles always had and retained those roots, btw. Smile, no matter how wonderous it would have been, wouldn't  "rock" like Sgt. Pepper did, therefore I don't think it would have fared as well as we all would like to think.... Come to think of it, Smile has more in common with what Zappa was doing at the time, (Lumpy Gravy/We're Only In It For The Money) and not exactly selling millions of copies of, than Zepplin, Hendrix, The Who, and all the acts that were soon to take over the music world. The momentum was too strong for Smile to have overcome. So, I tend to believe that we would have gotten Wild Honey after Smile (no Smiley) no matter what. Perhaps Brian would have cut it with the wrecking crew, but that's about what the only difference might have been.

I've got to throw in some praise for Friends.  What a great little record.  It is the last BBs record that I really feel the presence of Brian Wilson's true talents.  Some writers and critics would have you believe that after Smile fell apart Brian quit the band.  But his work is all over Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, and Friends.  It is 20/20 for me that I start to feel Brian leaving the band behind and going up to bed.  I think Friends is the best kept secret in the BBs catalog.  It is so moody and mellow, it's understated feel can easily be mistaken for lack of ambition.  It took me a long time to graduate to the level of Friends, but it was worth the wait.  The middle section of the title track just kills me.  Little Bird, Passing By, Busy Doing Nothing.  I always add I Went To Sleep to my Friends play list.  That song was recorded for Friends and should have been on there--it fits the vibe perfectly.  The Friends album kind of has the best parts of Smiley Smile and Wild Honey.  The session players are back, the production is at a classic BW level, but it is more down-home than Pet Sounds.  It is the work of a master who is just taking it easy and shooting the breeze.  I would put Friends right up there with All Summer Long, Today!, and Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) as classic B-level BBs albums (the A-level being reserved for Pet Sounds, GV, and Smile).  I'd say it is more consistent than Today! or Summer Days, but it has more of the feel of those two records because of the lack of outside lyricists (Asher, Parks).  For me Friends has the same vibe as Paul McCartney's first two solo records (McCartney and Ram)--home spun, pastoral, not trying too hard.  I love me some Friends! 

I LOVE Friends and feel that it's actually as lush and thought-out of a production as Pet Sounds, just more mellow and laid back. But just take in those harmonies!!!! MAN!!!

And the insturmentation is very inventive and unusualm, and Diamond Head really is a mind-bender in so many subtle ways.

An amazing album

Pretty good points and Friends is stellar. I don't see Smile as really changing the path he took musically. Maybe he would have been the sole producer or writer a little bit longer, but maybe not. I see his evolution from Surfin' Safari to Spring as a pretty continuous one, broken only when he stopped recording regularly. One minor correction is that I Went To Sleep was not from Friends but was an early 20/20 session. I agree that Brian pulled back to an extent in mid 68 but he was still there pretty constantly until 1972. Sunflower to me is the last one I really feel Brian's heart in fully. Steve Desper has also written about Brian being there for a lot of Surf's Up though in obviously it was more in a  background capacity. 20/20 was  the only studio album before CATP where there was more then one or two tracks withut him.

See, this I'm not so sure about. Look at Sgt. Pepper's track list: "Lovely Rita", "When I'm 64". "With a Little Help From My Friends", "Getting Better", "She's Leaving Home", and arguably a few others were songs most folks (or, maybe, back in '67, people under thirty) could relate to easily. Sure, you had songs like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" or "Within You and Without You", but it was balanced out by the more 'terrestrial' songs. SMiLE didn't seem to have that balance. Maybe "With Me Tonight" could've been that song, although the takes of that song floating around are bit too incantation-like to have mainstream appeal. SMiLE's songs, from "Cabinessence" to "Wonderful" to "Surf's Up" to "Heroes & Villains", were just all so dense that I don't think it would have caught on that much with the general public, especially coming from the Beach Boys of all people. "Vegetables" kind of fits in with the Sgt. Pepper's vibe that became so popular, being silly in a 'McCartneyesque' way, but it's still a really weird song, honestly. I love it, but it's weird.

Van Dyke Parks material just didn't have mainstream appeal, and I think that's why Mike Love objected to his contributions. Look at Song Cycle. It's a great album, but became renowned as epic commercial failure, and it basically represents in terms of material what Van Dyke was bringing to the SMiLE project. SMiLE was unapologetically progressive. Like Brian said, "SMiLE was ahead of its time." And he was right. Still, it was a masterpiece. I just think if it was released in '67 it would've been called Brian's "bizarre masterpiece" and become a cult classic instead of bringing about the musical revolution some like to romanticize it as having had the potential to do.

And I still think the real reason we didn't get SMiLE in '67 is because Brian lost his sanity. When you're losing your sanity, making music as ambitious SMiLE is just too much to deal with. That's why we got the pared down Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, and Friends from Brian instead. He couldn't handle trying to be the most popular songwriter in the world anymore. Like Mike said, after "Heroes & Villains" Brian stopped worrying about being competitive. It's extremely common for schizophrenics to withdraw from the activities they enjoyed before, mainly because their illness becomes too distracting.  Another interesting thing Mike said about Brian, in reference to "This Whole World", was that by 1970 Brian could still write beautiful songs but he just didn't have the energy to complete a whole album. He just didn't have it in him. It wasn't because people were stifling him creatively (you can tell by his post-SMiLE output that he did whatever he wanted musically). For someone who had been as proud as Brian, it was a bitter pill to swallow, and he may have blamed others out of that same pride.

To build on the ending of my last post, this brings up Brian saying, later on, that he didn't release SMiLE because Mike "didn't like it", or that "the band hated it". But he had to have known that when he was writing some of those songs for SMiLE that some of the band members wouldn't know what to make of it. I mean, if we can understand why Mike Love didn't like SMiLE and we don't even know the guy personally, then Brian had to know Mike wouldn't like it. Was it really a shock to him that Mike objected to some of it? Van Dyke even said that the "sunny down snuff..." lyric was making fun of Mike Love. It was basically a practical joke to include it. Didn't Brian even try to have Mike sing it at first?

You just have to think that Brian understood that SMiLE would alienate people like Mike and Al Jardine. Or did he really think, at least for awhile, that the spiritual nature of his music would overcome all boundaries? With someone like Brian it's hard to say. Maybe he found it more difficult to deal with the objections of his family and band than he thought it would be? Who knows? Only Brian can say and he's not talking...

When I draw a picture, there's always a magical point about halfway in when I think "this is going to be the best picture I've ever drawn!" At this stage anything is possible. Then inevitably as I gradually finish the picture, something is lost and I have to accept that the illustration did not fulfill it's initial potential. I read an interesting quote somewhere that suggested all art is attempting to chase that magical 'anything is possible' moment, to keep that potential even when the art is finished. i think great artists succeed - Picasso's paintings have that tangible, alive, flexible, anything is possible quality. They manage to reflect the ever changing nature of reality. Smile also has that quality, partly though because it wasn't finished! Maybe Brian knew that every time he set something in concrete with Smile, committed to a sequence within a song, something was lost and that was one of the reasons he chopped and changed and endlessly tinkered with the songs.

Personally I agree with the posters that say its incompleteness is its greatest asset. I was listening/playing with Brian Eno's new interactive music app 'Bloom' recently and marvelling that it really is music in an entirely new format - perhaps the future of music, then I realised we already have an interactive album - Smile of course - and there's something incredible about that, even if it was an accident.

I think you can get sad about the fact it wasn't finished, but I promise you, you wouldn't get half the enjoyment that you do from ther incomplete artefact. Plus, half the good stuff wouldn't have been used anyway. I think the best lesson Smile can teach us is to accept what it is for what it is, and not mourn what might have been.

Lovely post. Indeed, in creating, there is a scary moment... 'it can only get worse from now on, because I will have to eliminate many possibilities...' and you know that with hindsight you will criticize yourself in no small terms...

There is certainly beauty in potential. (The same thing comes across in sports, by the way. How many times does the basketball rave over talented-but-unfinished 18-year-olds, many of whom never pan out, over 22-year-old college stars, many of whom end up productive, steady but unsexy pros?) But part of that is cowardice. "I can only do this thing harm." Hell, that's reason enough to stay in my bedroom all day and dream perfect dreams. There is an aspect of that to the unfinished Smile. I respect ambition, but unrealized ambition is only that. There is a lot to be said for finishing what you're working on and beginning the next one. There is a lot of romance in workmanlike production, when the workman is talented.

I guess I am in a minority when I say I think that Smile WAS finished in 2004, for better or for worse?

The way I see it, after reading hte post post by Buddha hat...at some point when you're working on something that is brilliant in potential, something happens and it's not so perfect. You try to make it perfect. Then you either come up with the magic missing piece of the puzzle or you give up trying to make it person.

 Then you just finish the damn thing so you can move on.

It just takes Brian Wilson a LONG time to finish things and move on and he often needs some outside prodding to do it..

It was finished. It's just that enough time had passed that the finished thing couldn't possibly have really been the way it would have been finished all those years earlier. (And the finished thing wasn't what most people wanted it to be.)

Great point buddhahat.  I too have considered Smile to inadvertently be the first user interactive music.  It is up to die hard fans to finish what their hero started.  There is nothing else like it in music.  Someone should build a Brian Eno-like interactive music app for Smile.  Load up all the known recordings and have an interface that allows you to edit and endlessly tinker with the tracks.  Pretty much what all of us already do, but in a streamline form.

And to add to the "Smile was finished in 04 debate," I would have to side with those that don't consider BWPS to be the finished Smile.  Don't get me wrong, it was one of the great thrills of my life to see BWPS come out, but there is many problems with the album, including historical inaccuracies that could have been avoided with some deeper research.  I consider BWPS to be just the ultimate Smile fan mix, assembled by Darian Sahanaja.  He did what we all dreamed of doing--getting Parks and Wilson together to finish the record.  Darian Sahanaja is a smile freak from way back, and he found himself in the perfect situation to make it happen.  BSPW reflects many of the Smile culture theories that guys like Leaf and Priore had in mind.  Darian over time got himself in BW's backing band, and was pushing Brian towards Smile material for awhile.  He caught a lucky break when Brian's wife decided it was a good idea to do it.  Between the two of them they prodded Wilson through the process, Darian whispering ideas into Brian's ear while they assembled the pieces.  Brian did make substantial new contributions to the album, but just take a look at the Beautiful Dreamer flick--Brian didn't want to do the record, he would have been happier not doing it.  People around him decided it was good for him to do it (and real good for business) so he went along with it, the same thing he has been doing for 30 years.  Priore had/has all kinds of ideas about how Smile was meant to be that aren't grounded in much provable fact (ie Friday night meant to go into Da Da).  Leaf came up with the idea of putting the H&V intro in front of Mrs Oleary's Cow, we proved that here on this site.  I could go on and on (actually I already have!).  We could have a whole topic thread on problems with BWPS.  There already has been a few.

Yeah. WEll, I don't want to argue with anybody, that's for sure.

I guess MY theory on why it didn't get done in the first place is Brian didn't know how-- and it was causing him too much stress. Nobody knows, of course, but that's what I believe.

Therefore, it's not hard for me to believe that the project needed A Darian to finish it. And, sure, it could have been finished a thousand different ways. But that's the way it was finished, and that's it. And, I think it's great!! (The sixties unfinished stuff IS better, but the new versions are also great.)

But...It is nice to dream about what it oculd have been. But I am not so sure it would have been any better or worse...just different.

It is hard for me however to imagine that Wonderful-Song for Children-CIFOTM-Surf's Up could be in any other order!!!!

No I agree with you that they finished it in 04 and that it's great in many ways (particularly the sequence of Wonderful to Surf's Up) but it so obviously doesn't answer so many of the Smile riddles, that the ghost of Smile 67 still haunts many people here, me included!

It's fascinating that the original sessions cause so much anguish to us Smile freaks. If you think anguish seems a strong word, just read all the posts where people seem genuinely sad and troubled that we don't know which piece went where, or what the lyrics to x were. Does anyone ever consider how ironic it is that Brian set out to create music that would make us smile, but ended up creating music that ties people up in knots instead? Personally I find it fascinating to imagine that in some way, just as he set out to create songs that would convey the feelings of love that he was experiencing in Pet Sounds, with Smile he inadvertently managed to create music that years later would totally jumble people's minds, a reflection of his own mental state at the time. He infused the music with his own inability to complete it, and I think the 66/67 fragments have a lot of that sadness and confusion in them - the power to frustrate, and addle the mind! Maybe this is part of the beauty. I spent months, years even, re-shuffling my Smile mix to try and come up with the most satisfying sequence and ultimately I realised it wasn't actually making me happy because I was always deluding myself with the thought 'Perhaps this is what Brian was aiming for in 66' or some-such, which was clearly nonsense. Once I let go of the notion that the pieces could be organised into any illusion of a 'finished' Smile, I began to enjoy it more. I do think with something that is unfinished, you have to acknowledge that it is unfinished and respect that when you are listening to it. You won't uncover any other answers, Brian quotes, contemporary interviews, Durrie Parks acetates etc. that will make Smile as it existed in 67 any more 'finished'. This is obviously an impossibility as something is either finished or not. You can argue that the discovery of an acetate with Look vocals on it would make us happier but I don't think it would lessen the sadness that Smile was not completed in 67.

I think the most staggering thing about the Smile music therefore is that it accidently has this incredible zen like lesson within it i.e. stop yearning or dreaming about what it could have been had he finished it, and accept that Smile is incomplete, and infinitely beautiful in its incompleteness.

Or accept that he did finish it in 04 and love that version instead!

No, that would probably make me more frustrated and sad over the fact that it wasn't completed in '67. Because having vocals for "Look" tracked down would mean we'd be a tiny, small step closer to a finished Smile, and the closer to (or rather less far from) a release it turned out to be, the bigger my frustration... Of course I would love to see it surface, though. * Sigh *

I'm with Luther and Lance.  I know we're in the minority on this site but I am REALLY getting tired of this notion that Brian was too damaged to finish Smile in 1967 because of all those nasty people around him and that it only got finished in 2004 because of all those nasty people around him.  Guess I saw a potted plant or a hologram on the last couple tours.  This is a canard right up there with the now (properly) debunked myth that Mike Love ruined everything forever from 1966 on all by his bad self.   Yes Brian needed help and prodding to finish it.  I'll even concede it was largely completed by a committee.  But Brian was still a part of that committee, as the name above the title he had the final chop, and if he really didn't want it to happen it wouldn't have.  

My only tiny quibble with Luther is his thought that BWPS was not what most people wanted it to be -- that may be true of the posters here.  But I think 300,000 + sales answers the question.  And I think that is how history will see it too.  It will be judged as a concert work, as it was premiered.  And us cranky folks won't matter.

To be sure, the 1966-67 sessions are indispensable listening if you're a fan of the music.  I  would even call them a necessary companion to appreciating the finished work.  Musicology careers could flourish comparing how close the thing got to completion back then, with how it was finally assembled 37 years later.  However "historically inaccurate" that might be.  And all the fan mixes are valuable parts of that study.   If not we wouldn't be here still talking about it.

I was actually only talking about how it lived up to the expectations of people who are seriously into it, such as people posting here. Any more general (and more accepting) public wasn't considered.

Of course BWPS wasn't/isn't as good as Smile, but (all imo) it's not meant to be. BWPS is A 60+ year old man coming to terms with Smile, its legacy and his own legacy. The Smile concert I saw was an incredibly beautiful and emotional experience for me and that alone was worth redoing it.

In 2009, I can have 8 CDs of sessions and I can have the "finished" album, and there are parts of the new BWPS that I love that weren't in the original.

Where BWPS bests Smile is in its completeness and in the 35+ years of history that have passed since the original sessions. It makes sense that BWPS is complete.

We cannot choose one or the other, and I like having both.

Yeah, exactly. The problem with BWPS is that it wasn't produced by Brian. From what we can tell, he had almost no input in the production. Brian, especially back in the 60s, had a way with echo, timber, and texture that was special and just not normal. "Wind Chimes" is a perfect example. The blend on the '66 tag was magical. Brian had those dog ear's. The blend on BWPS sounds like what it is, the work of your average producer using protools. SMiLE's production was something that would've been remembered, at the very least.  BWPS is workmanlike and that's it.

You are hearing basically two things:
-The difference in equipment in studios between the 60s and the 00s.. this includes the use of digital technology rather than analog..
-The dynamic range on BWPS is way more static and compressed than any 60s recording would have been.

If BWPS is the sound of an average producer, we should all be so lucky as to be average...

As for the problem being Brian not producing it, let's keep in mind there's almost certainly a very good reason for that: either he was incapable or was uninterested. So if there has to be a problem, it's that a young, capable and energetic Brian didn't produce it. If a 60-something BW had produced it, it probably would have sounded like Love You era performances.

"Good enough. We're done."

Now THAT is an intriguing prospect...Smile played entirely by Brian on analogue synthesizers...someone tell Melinda and maybe Brian can go back out on tour as a one-man-one-synth act.

I think you hit the nail on the head about Brian.  He hasn't really cared about his productions since Pet Sounds really.  The "General Patton" of the studio who would put musicians through 20 plus takes is the guy who produced the original sessions, and that guy is long gone. 

You have to remember that Darian got Brian into BWPS by presenting it as a live performance. Brian, apparently, was pretty terrified about doing the SMILE album live, or at least, recreating SMiLE as it would have been done in 1967 for a live performance.

So what we get with BWPS is a presentable version of SMiLE without some stuff that might have freaked Brian out. But man, it would be cool to have heard a '67 version.

What the good Doctor said.  The guy I saw grinning and clowning around with his bandmates on-stage at the Sydney Opera House wasn't a manipulated robot, he was a man who's been through serious depression and, through a combination of support and moderate ass-kicking from those around him, finally climbed the damn mountain that defeated him all those years ago.  He was singing songs he just plain couldn't face in the Seventies, he was engaging with the people around him in a way he didn't for years.  (The contrast between the staring zombie in that "Here Comes The Night" clip and his Smile-tour performance is just jaw-dropping.)

So he's not "General Patton in the studio" now?  Patton lost in '67.  This guy won.

The original Smile sessions are still indefinably gorgeous, but that shouldn't take away from the magic of the finished version as well.  This whole downplaying-BWPS thing strikes me not so much as "light a candle, curse the glare" as "light a candle, hide in a cupboard cause you'd rather imagine in the darkness"...

Cheers,
Jon Blum

It's totally miraculous and gratifying that Brian came to terms with the Smile legend (with a little/lot
of help from his friends) recorded it in a complete form with new and original lyrics added, and toured
it (amazing and irrepaceable memories for me also). But all that notwithstanding, a sessions set, with
every involved person on board and hopefully contributing previously unheard fragments or different versions, (Durry Parks acetates etc.) and EVERY fairly substantive piece of music, no matter how seemingly incidental (such as the gorgeous, ethereal tag to "Child is Father of the Man, early version". Shimmeringly beautiful and indispensable!) painstakingly located and included, is a vital and legitimate dream for the best possible conclusion to the long, frustrating history of the most famous unfinish-
ed album in pop music history.

It absolutely can and should happen someday, and BWPS, while standing on its own merits, DOES
have an entirely different sound and vibe and is simply not a substitute for the lovingly produced, lushly appointed and annotated "sessions" box set that will hopefully emerge from Capitol Records
in the indeterminate future, when all true believers will live happily ever after! Amen. :) ;)

A couple of very good remarks have been made, re: BWPS and its sound. I think it's not particular to BWPS at all. There seems to be a consensus amongst producers nowadays to create some sort of adynamic, flat sound, that is completely impartial to the volume levels at which it is played. My personal example is 'Magic' by Bruce Springsteen. Why on earth Bruce thinks Brendan O'Brien is a good studio chief for him is a great riddle. Put on 'Darkness On The Edge Of Town', or 'Born In The U.S.A.', preferably on vinyl, and you will be flabbergasted about the scope, the range, and the detail, chiming bells, glowing sax work, razor-sharp drums, the lot. Put on 'Magic' and you'll be severely dissappointed. Flat, and you'll have trouble to discern the sax work in the midst of those guitar drones. Is it true that some studio pros can't hear anything above 8 kHz anymore? One would think so.

Also: it could well be that producers try to create a 'one size fits all' sound. Car radio, MP3, CD, PC speakers, iPod, all kinds of el cheapo ear plugs... It may be that lots of youngsters never learned, or even have 'unlearned', how fine music can sound if reproduced properly. Sometimes I think: hey, did they really re-invent AM sound again? The sound of most radio stations does not help either: horrifically compressed, there seems to have been omitted much more that what is actually still there.

I wish that young kids of today all would go to some demonstration in a good Hi-Fi store, bring their favourite CDs with them, and let an expert show how musical experience can be. Yesterday I listened to Toumani Diabaté's 'Mandé Variations', on World Circuit. The sound is crystal clear, with so much detail... as if you weren't at home, but in some sort of cave with ideal acoustics, and Toumani would be sitting right in front of you and play for you in person. And I don't even have top-class hi-fi equipment.

The sound revolution starts here. There's a world to win for us oldsters!

Have you heard the vinyl?  I don't think it resembles that description at all.

I have the BWPS vinyl LP and it still has that 'upfront' smear of sound that the CD has. Comparing it to other BB LPs on vinyl and it comes off second in terms of dynamics and depth of sound.

And 'Mande Variations' has an incredible sound. The ringing and vibration of the notes and strings is captured beautifully, so these techniques are still available to the modern producer, but they are not used for some god-awful commercial considerations.

The Aliens released their second album 'Luna' on (horribly compressed) CD, but they also released the original files for download without the compression (purchased separately, sadly). They have since disowned the sound of the CD-mix, which makes you wonder why niche bands like Aliens (and Brian Wilson for that matter) bother to 'compete' with the slick superficial stuff on the radio.

Best question of the day. If we accept that classical music also fills a niche, then these people rightfully took the proper route: every attention is paid to a proper sound, also on the beautiful budget Naxos label. It can be done for little money. Hey, with classical you sometimes have to turn down the crescendos because the dynamic range is so vast. And that is a good thing.

I think BWPS has a pretty decent production. Could you imagine how bad it would have sounded if it had been done between 76-92. I only heard them on vinyl so maybe they are warmer but I think Brian's last four studio albums are OK production wise. The performances aren't universally good but I have no problem with the sound. I wouldn't compare them to any of his pre 1975 stuff but so little holds up to that anyhow. Frankly if I were to get into it I don't think almost anything recorded over the last thirty five years sounds as good as stuff laid down in the early fifties to the early seventies. I think that has to do with the equipment more then anything. The great old tube mics  pure analog sound etc. I mean with Brian loosing his voice and the other Beach Boys (including a pre damaged Dennis) not on it how could it be as good as the 1966 tapes? The propossed 1972 version may have been great, everything was still vocally intact then. Mike Love said when asked about BWPS that he couldn't imagine it would equal what they did back then and he was right. Still it's better then I expected, and I am glad to have a complete version of Smile though it will never be the REAL Smile.

Well said MBE, I pretty much agree with everything you say

At the same time, General Patton's obsessive-compulsive perfectionism played a major role in Smile's demise back in '67.   Take after take.   Session after session.  Recording and re-recording.  Chuck Britz said several times over the years that "Heroes and Villains" would have been bigger and better than "Good Vibrations" if Brian had just been able to leave it alone.  Hell, look at Brian's relentless tinkering with "Good Vibrations" itself.  After months of recording and re-recording, Brian reportedly almost "canned" the song.  As the story goes, he only decided to release it after Danny Hutton asked if he could take it for himself.   Let's face it.  With Smile, Brian tried to record a whole album the way he recorded "Good Vibrations."   Take after take.   Session after session.  Recording after recording.  And, not surprisingly, that approach failed.

Well said indeed. Maybe in the future there will be a trend towards constructing retro studios with
elaborate all-analog equipment set-ups, and the best ones will be perpetually in demand. :-\

When I say "General Patton" I was only referring to Brian's in-studio demeanor.  The problem with Smile wasn't the quality of what was being produced...Brian's issue was that he changed his mind so much after the sessions, and recorded so many pieces that he couldn't decide how to put them together.  It was about self-doubt and obsessive tinkering after the fact, not during the sessions. 

There was nothing wrong with the way he got things done in the studio; I think his track record up to that point proves that. 

No one ever knocked the quality of what was being produced. It was 1966-67 and he was Brian Freakin' Wilson.  Of course, the quality of all those takes and sessions re-records is great.  Spectacular, even.   

What I disagree with, though, is this idea that you can separate Brian's perfectionism from his obsessive-compulsive tinkering.  They were two sides of the same coin, IMO.   Just as he pushed the musicians for take after take to get the perfect track and the Beach Boys to get perfect vocals, he pushed himself to make the perfect mix, arrangement, etc.

That's really a good point, Brian was getting too obsessive.  Yeah he did have a great track record up to that point, but you got to know when to stop. Part of the greatness of albums like Friends is that Brian got back in touch with basic good music.