When did Smile become legendary? Was it a marketing ploy for the Surf's Up LP?

[MikestheGreatest!!]

Oh, I also want to say that I think the record market was mostly single oriented up until the release of Pepper's and even for a good period after that, the LP was not totally dominant yet.  I don't think Williams Crawdaddy articles and the Bernstein special had that much significance to the general record buying public at that point in time, if Add Some was that far ahead of the curve, then he/she is truly to be congratulated, but I still don't think the non-release of Smile had that much to do with their demise, I don't even think they were yet regarded as that big of an album group in the public mind, I don't remember anyone in junior high or high school anticipating an upcoming BBs album release, in my experience at least, you just walked into a store and these records just showed up, and you bought them or you didn't.  I kind of think it was just their time to fade, they got older, the demographic had changed and whereas southern California and surf culture was still pretty popular nationally, that was starting to fade out also around "66, you stopped hearing so much about it and the Frankie and Annette moves and Jan and Dean had died out, etc.   There was not much of a rock press per se, at least in my neck of the woods and I suspect the Midwest in general and perhaps large swaths of the country.  NYC, Boston and LA and SF I am sure heard much more of the inside record dope than we did though, but the teen demographic really wasn't that focused on insider music news IMHO....I really don't even remember kids talking that much about the next Beatles album, when would it come out, etc, it was just assumed another one would at some point in time and when it did everyone would buy it.

The hits led the charge for most groups at that point in time.  Beach Boys albums sold in droves because they were hit packed.  However when the hits dried up, so did their popularity and let's not kid ourselves....Smile was never going to be that popular.  It was too outré to have made it in a big way.  I also don't think Brian could have stylistically followed it up with anything that would have been very commercial or popular.  I think his general style of music had become passé, the Spector model using the group and the studio.

He could have only done what he wound up doing....refining the group"s sound, but not really coming up with anything ground-breaking.  I think his wad was basically shot with the Smile recordings, though he did some good stuff after that also.  But I just don't think Smile or that other good stuff was ever destined to be as popular as their pre-Pet Sounds material.  Their time had simply pretty much passed, at least in commercial terms.  And that's ok, I enjoyed being the only BBs fan in town or in the dorm, even in 1972 during the supposed comeback....and concert tickets were easy to get and cheap and they came around all the time.  Early seventies were a great time to be a fan.

A fave memory was standing beside Al Jardine in the Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence KS as he gave a mini-lecture to another person about the qualities of various Birkenstock sandals and Mike Love inviting the concert audience to a particular street address after the show where a bunch of meditators were meeting.  Never made the latter, but the group did seem awfully accessible back then....an accessible "super-group", how about that?