If 'Smile' had been released in '67, it would have bombed commercially nearly as badly as did 'Smiley Smile'. It might have gotten some rave notices, but rock criticism then was still in its infancy.

Good vocals by Al. Song and the arrangement...not good. Sounds like a cheap advertising jingle that some local furniture store would run on the radio.

Rather than Brian and VDP never meeting, what alternative history might have ensued had Parks formed a permanent songwriting partnership with Brian? And not only with Brian -- Carl and Dennis also used lyric writers from outside the band.

How would the history of the group been different with Carl and Dennis co-writing with Parks in the Sunflower thru Holland period? Parks of course was not just a lyric writer, he also might have contributed to the music and the arrangements. Carl, for one, might have become a more prolific writer with a partner contributing musical ideas.

In this alternate history, Parks might have become The Beach Boys equivalent to the Grateful Dead's Robert Hunter.

I think that the simple truth was that Carl was as square, in his own way, as Mike and Al. The Paley stuff was too hip for his taste.

It was Bruce, not Carl, who tried to get Sean O'Hagan of the High Llamas involved.

A clue to Carl's objections to the Paley material might be found in the music that Carl did write and arrange around this time : the Beckley-Lamm-Wilson lp. Maybe if the Paley stuff sounded more like Air Supply, Carl might have been more enthusiatic.

The Paley material had the potential to serve as the basis for a Beach Boys lp every bit as good as 'Holland'. Carl's taste level seems to have atrophied sometime in the late 70's.

Much as some folks rightly complain about Mike walking away from the reunion band in 2012, Carl rejecting the Paley stuff in '95 was more significant.

I sometimes suspect that there might be a Salieri/Mozart dynamic at play. Parks is smarter than Brian, more versatile,. more technically accomplished, yet Brian is the genius.

Brian was in fact in the process of "pulling back" in the latter half of 1967, initially though in name only.

By all accounts, Brian was the sole producer of 'Smiley Smile', yet the lp had a Produced by The Beach Boys credit. That's Brian's 1st step in pulling back. On WH, Brian is the main producer, but, for the first time, had Carl and Bruce lend a hand. And again, a group production credit on the album sleeve, this time slightly more merited.

Do we know the full story on 'Friends'? My impression is that Brian is still in charge production-wise, but that he's opened up the songwriting and is collaborating with Carl, Al, and Dennis on the songs and perhaps the arrangements. Another step back from total control.

Of course, by 20/20 and Sunflower Carl, Dennis, Al, and Bruce are all contributing productions and arrangements. Again, this is just my impression, but I suspect that this gradual album-by-album yielding of control was not an accident, but Brian's post-SMiLE plan. He no longer wanted sole responsibility for the group's successes and failures.

During it's heyday, what we now call Sunshine Pop would have been seen as folk rock ( Mamas and Pappas, the Association) or psychedelic pop (Millennium, Sagittarius).

To the extent that SP had psychedelic elements, that aspect died when psychedelia died, at the end of the 60s. The folk rock elements was absorbed into 70s country rock.

^
The definitive article on the Raiders.

"We collaborated on an unreleased song during the sessions for That’s Why God Made the Radio [2012], the first Beach Boys album of original material since Summer in Paradise arrived 20 years before. Incidentally, my good friend Terry Melcher produced the latter album.

It’s the first song we’ve written together. I’m not sure what the title will ultimately be because after the original rough sketch, the song became part of another, larger composition, so there may be a couple of additional writers on it. If I tell you the lyrics, I’ll let the cat out of the bag [laughs]. Let’s just say it’s a love song about a boy and a girl. I haven’t recorded any vocals at this point, but anything is possible. Brian really likes my voice."

Yeah, where are folks getting the idea that Mike has a writing credit on 'Leaving This Town'?

Both Carl and George were originally non-writing lead guitarists who then had brief creative flare-ups, George 1968-72, Carl 1970-72.

For a moment there, it looked like George would have the most important post-Beatles solo career, and also for a moment it seemed that Carl was ready to step into Brian's shoes as chief creative force of the Beach Boys.

I love the songs, vocals and arrangements on LY, but then again I love Guided By Voices and that band's lo-fi, occasionally out-of-tune aesthetic.

LY belongs more to the indie, punk, and New Wave branch of pop than to the classic Beach Boys sound.

I interpret "most polarizing" as those lps evoking the most passionate disagreements.

M.I.U. might have fans disagreeing about its quality, but those disagreements seem to be low-key. Folks don't really care all that much. And SIP has, on the one side, fans who passionately hate it, but then we have on the other side people only saying that it's not total garbage, it has 4 or 5 ok songs. Passion on one side, but not the other.

Love You and Smiley Smile, though, have passionate proponents on each side of the quality argument. Now, whether fans consider Smiley Smile great, near-great, or a mere shadow of what should have been, I think everyone agrees that it's a Beach Boys record, fitting more or less comfortably into their existing canon.

Those fans who dislike Love You, though, tend to consider it as an anomaly, a Brian solo album in all but name -- a Brian at his most eccentric, synth-crazed phase to boot, and as such not really belonging in The Beach Boys mainstream.

So, the correct answer to the question of "what is the most polarizing Beach Boys album" is : Love You.

People are intrigued by the glamour of a lost masterpiece. 'Smile' released in 1967 would have been a cult item -- something akin to 'Forever Changes'.

I am sure that Mike feels that whatever mistakes he has made, they pale in comparison to all the horrible behavior and bad decisions made by Brian Wilson over the years.

Actually, they do.

Oh, look what I just did. 

Mike had done worse things than offering drugs to his 10 year old daughter?

A more interesting question : why is Mike Love so despised for being a run-of-the-mill jerk, when many truly horrible rock stars are given a pass? Lou Reed? Brian Jones? Arthur Lee? Jimmy Page? Chuck Berry? Etc.

A lovely, limpid, luminous arrangement.

Is there any other song that captures the experience of lying around on a serene summer day, nodding off while you half-listen to the soft ambient noises coming through an open window?

Brian's lyrics can be clunky ( "a musical song"), but he's but one of the few writers trying to capture the small, mundane, yet numinous moments that make up a quiet day.

Song is catchy enough. It's the arrangement that kills it. If Brian had been able to give it his 1964/65 production style, maybe we would have had a fun little throwback number.

Saxes should be used only as background texture in pop songs. The Dave Clark 5 knew that. So did Spector. So did Brian in his prime.

'Two Lane Blacktop' was a big influence on Tarentino. So, Dennis as a major character is not out of the question.

Clueless old guy tries to update his sound, makes an embarrassing record. It happens. No need to psychoanalyze.

WH, in the year of Hendrix, Cream, the Doors, Sgt. Pepper, etc., seemed to lack ambition : lo-fi home recordings, only 24 minutes long (and even at length there were still filler cuts). With WH, the band announced they were out of the big-time, masterpiece-making, musically ground-breaking game. In a way, it was their 'Nashville Skylines'.

Of course, removed as it now is from the context of its times,we can appreciate its virtues, especially with this new mix : an energetic collection of good-to-great soul-inflected pop tunes.

The story I remember hearing about the WH sessions is that Brian produced most of the lp, but after the Redwood/Darlin' mutiny he stepped back and let the rest of the band -- Carl and Bruce, mostly -- take charge in the studio.

Was Brian involved at all in 'How She Boogalooed It'?

The very notion of a "formula" is the exact opposite of the way the true classics of popular music and legendary creations like Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper, Ziggy Stardust, Dark Side Of The Moon, etc were envisioned and created. If such a thing as a "formula" were codified and followed, we would not be celebrating the landmark anniversaries of those albums as we are in 2017.

Going against the formula, if one was defined, was what led to those albums and others like it which are in the upper echelon of music as art. And that extends from not only the music, but also the technology, the visuals, the presentation overall, etc.

Following the formula as a guiding principle is what leads to misguided attempts to repeat previous success by thinking elements which went into those successes were more responsible than what really was.

The formula, prior to 1965, was that the lyrics would be from the point of view of a teenager. That formula began to change with the Stones, Dylan, the Byrds, 'Rubber Soul', etc.

'Pet Sounds' was written from the perspective of someone Brian's age, early 20s, with the concerns of a young man, and not those of someone in high school. The music industry was discovering that if the songwriters wrote from their own perspective, adopting the voice of someone their own age, that teenagers would still buy the record, and that now college-age people would as well. Thus, the rise of the lp.