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

[Hickory Violet Part IV]

We have the initial hype. The Jules Seagal stuff. The appearance on the Bernstein show. Then it's cancelled. Smiley Smile is released and their popularity plummets.

So when does Smile become legend? Was it around the time of Surfs Up? How much of a role did Jack Reilly play? Was it a marketing ploy? It seems to centre around the time they were becoming hip again,.

Was it consciously hyped up to show their counter culture credentials? i.e "Look, we once had this album which was as important as Sgt Pepper, if not more"

We know they played on the stength of that legend for many years.

Here is Carl discussing Smile in 1973. The legend already seems fully formed.

https://youtu.be/HtaBudnUClo

Was the legend of Smile just a marketing gimmick?

[Ang Jones]

I don't think so. Had SMiLE not already had a legend it wouldn't have been good marketing to promote it. We'd heard bits of it and those bits were special.

[Hickory Violet Part IV]

I know tracks appeared before 1971. I know there was an interest there amonst industry people and diehards. For the record buying public though I don't think Smile was legendary

If it was remembered at all it was it just an album the Beach Boys hadn't released.

The story of Smile is a great story. The music withstood the hype. But I'm interested in how and when it become the myth that it did.

I believe it was around the time Surf's Up came out.  They knew that song was remembered from the Bernstein appearance. They knew the album would sell more if it was called Surf's Up, if the music press was given the Smile story. That was Jack Reilly's decision. Smile was played up big time to promote that album and re establish them as a hip act. This was done consciously.


So was the mythology of Smile created to sell Surfs Up? I believe it was.

And when I say created, I don't mean misinformation. I mean a conscious attempt to mythologise something.

[Lee Marshall]

Smile became legendary immediately.  We Beach Boys fans had been blessed...perhaps even spoiled by a wealth of riches from 1963 onward.  
3 albums in 1963.
4 albums in 1964...including the first Concert record
3 albums in 1965...including Party
Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations in 1966.

So imagine what we were ready for in 1967!!!

They had just been named group of the year for '66 in the U.K.  The word was that Smile was coming any minute...and then the release was postponed...and then came Heroes and Villains and the release was killed.

WHAT !?!?!


As it turned out...we got the flippin' "bunt" instead of the "grand slam"...which only made one wonder what the hell had happened and what the PHUCK was this sh*t???  The logical progression was interrupted with foolishness.

Subsequently there was a story about it all in Crawdaddy magazine with Paul Williams which came out again included in a book...maybe 'Outlaw Blues'?  Ahhhhhhhhhhhh...So THAT'S what happened.  David Anderle filled in a LOT of the blanks.  We were made aware of a certain band member who bitched, moaned and whined the project into a corner.

Then came Wild Honey?  Back to basics music.  Then came Friends with some forward thinking music save for T.M.  Then came 2 Smile tracks on 1969's 20/20.  

Take away Good Vibrations and Heroes and Villains which were on Smiley Smile because they were hits in need of a 12 inch release...just like the Beatles got with the Yesterday and Today album in North America...and compare S.S. to Our Prayer and Cabinessence.  The legend continued to swell while the neglected legion of loyal fans continued to shrink.

Smile wasn't artificially propped up or hyped in order to sell Surf's Up.  We knew about Surfs Up for years before the album was released.  Jack Rieley knew what he was doing as the band's new manager.  He wanted to satiate the long time and disappointed fans while cultivating new ears into the audience mix.  Smile was a Legend before it was supposed to be originally released in the winter of 66/67.

[Lee Marshall]

.

[Hickory Violet Part IV]

I absolutely don't doubt you Add Some, but I think we can include you in that small group of diehard fans who stayed loyal, and for that I salute you. 

Are you sure Smile was legendary for the majority of the record buying public though, prior to 1971?

[Lee Marshall]

For real music fans yes.  For casual fans?  What did/do they know?  [or care for that matter?]    Casual fans likely can't name one member of The Band, or Boston or One Republic.  Casual fans can't tell you what the #1 song of the year was in 2012 let alone 1967.  

The casual fan expected a new Beach Boys album early in 1967...or at least one to start off the summer.  It didn't happen.  They moved on.  By the time Wild Honey came along...the Beach Boys had been replaced by groups who delivered great new product in a timely fashion.   Well over a year after Pet Sounds...the Beach Boys served up Smiley Smile instead of the promised masterpiece.  Click.  Off.  The party was over.

[Hickory Violet Part IV]

For real music fans yes.  For casual fans?  What did/do they know?  [or care for that matter?]     

That's interesting to know. The standard narrative is that pretty much the entire record buying public and the music press(with some brave exceptions) had turned against the Beach Boys by 1968.

So are you saying the initial Smile groundswell was larger than we are led to believe ?

By the way, I'd love to have a discussion about Smiley Smile (my favourite album) with you some time, some other thread maybe. I find the way we all hear completely different things out of the same recordings fascinating. I truly think we're blesssed to have such a diverse catalogue.

[KDS]

Smile became legendary immediately.  We Beach Boys fans had been blessed...perhaps even spoiled by a wealth of riches from 1963 onward.  
3 albums in 1963.
4 albums in 1964...including the first Concert record
3 albums in 1965...including Party
Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations in 1966.

So imagine what we were ready for in 1967!!!

They had just been named group of the year for '66 in the U.K.  The word was that Smile was coming any minute...and then the release was postponed...and then came Heroes and Villains and the release was killed.

WHAT !?!?!


As it turned out...we got the flippin' "bunt" instead of the "grand slam"...which only made one wonder what the hell had happened and what the PHUCK was this sh*t???  The logical progression was interrupted with foolishness.

I think Carl's baseball analogy was pretty apt, except in baseball a bunt, when well executed, can be a thing of beauty.  I think Smiley Smile is more like a bunt attempt that turns into a rally killing double play. 

[Bicyclerider]

Smile was a cult legend amongst the serious Beach Boys fans and some music critics but since The Beach Boys had faded from popularity the general listening public didn't pay much attention to it and with the short lifespan of popular music at the time, it was mostly forgotten.  Until the 2 Part Rolling Stone article that detailed the Smile saga just before the release of Surf's Up brought it back to the public consciousness and reinforced and cemented the "legend" of Smile.

[Lee Marshall]

Well bikeman...The Boys had just owned the fall with Good Vibrations...surely one of the top 2 songs of the entire year in '66.  SO?  If they had followed with Smile in a timely fashion... ... ...

We wouldn't be having this conversation...or many of the others which occur here.  History would have been different.  A LOT different.  The Boys faded from site due to self inflicted inactivity followed by the release of substandard dreck a full 16 months after the release of Pet Sounds.  In the mid 60s when new sounds were exploding out of the speakers day by day/week by week...16 months was a century.  They were lost and forgotten.  And it was a self inflicted and needless injury brought about by 1... negativity to the extreme and 2... by the ever increasing mental disorder exacerbated, in large part, by that debilitating negativity.  Perhaps Brian would have toppled exactly as he did eventually as the illness took its toll.  But there were a couple of people involved in his next to daily existence who pushed the buttons which sped up his demise.

[sick and cruel.]

[Peter Reum]

The reason Smile became famous is a mixture of interacting forces. The music that was heard by member's of the music press and the statements made by people at that time had a large influence. Most persuasive at the time were Paul Williams, Jules Siegel, and Leonard Berstein/David Oppenheim (hope I spelled Oppenheim correctly). Paul Williams heard the acetates at Brian's house. Jules Siegel and his then wife were part of Brian's group of interested newcomers, who he met through Van Dyke Parks. Leonard Bernstein heard Surfs Up on the Oppenheim film footage, and of course,  Oppenheim shot several hours of film about Brian.

In my opinion, those people, contemporaries of Smile, who spoke favorably and emphatically about Smile in film, press, and in creative music circles, launched the Smile legend.  Later, David Anderle and Paul Williams spoke about Brian in a two part conversation about Brian roughly 8 months after Brian shelved the tapes. Then Cabinessence and Our Prayer were issued on 20/20, and reinforced the power and innovative nature about Smile. Surfs Up was issued in a form done by Carl Then Carl tried to make sense of the modules in 1972, only to give up. That was publicized. Then the Endless Summer craze, the Brian's Back fiasco, and 30 minutes of previously uncirculated Smile are turned and traded, beginning to circulate.

You most likely know the story from there. But what I want to say about 1967 is that if Brian was going for a humor approach and Zen orientation, Smiley Smile was the real deal. It was also the first album fully assembled in a modular approach.  For me, it was the first modular musical album that the Smile tapes never could be.

[guitarfool2002]

There is hardly anything that Michael Vosse, David Anderle, or Jules Seigel had reported or written in 1967 and 1968 about Smile that hasn't turned out to be spot-on and accurate once more of the actual tapes and more information became available for fans to hear and see for themselves. So it's still mind-boggling to remember how some circles and ironically some of Mike Love's most vocal supporters tried to discredit or dismiss what those eyewitnesses and friends were saying about other aspects of Smile when they were so right-on in those original reports, a year or two removed from the actual events.

I think personally Smile in terms of a marketing ploy had some merit in the 70's, later 70's, when the Love management team was running the show and trying to fish for a new label deal. I remember one of the best lines I read about that situation was that the Beach Boys would dangle the Smile tapes and tease a release "like a carrot" in front of labels during negotiations for a new deal. But it wasn't as much a marketing ploy to the public as it was the band trying to score a record contract with new labels.

[Lonely Summer]

Smile became legendary immediately.  We Beach Boys fans had been blessed...perhaps even spoiled by a wealth of riches from 1963 onward.  
3 albums in 1963.
4 albums in 1964...including the first Concert record
3 albums in 1965...including Party
Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations in 1966.

So imagine what we were ready for in 1967!!!

They had just been named group of the year for '66 in the U.K.  The word was that Smile was coming any minute...and then the release was postponed...and then came Heroes and Villains and the release was killed.

WHAT !?!?!


As it turned out...we got the flippin' "bunt" instead of the "grand slam"...which only made one wonder what the hell had happened and what the PHUCK was this sh*t???  The logical progression was interrupted with foolishness.

I think Carl's baseball analogy was pretty apt, except in baseball a bunt, when well executed, can be a thing of beauty.  I think Smiley Smile is more like a bunt attempt that turns into a rally killing double play. 

Commercially, yes, but SS is a thing of beauty.

[kreen]

Well bikeman...The Boys had just owned the fall with Good Vibrations...surely one of the top 2 songs of the entire year in '66.  SO?  If they had followed with Smile in a timely fashion... ... ...

We wouldn't be having this conversation...or many of the others which occur here.  History would have been different.  A LOT different.  The Boys faded from site due to self inflicted inactivity followed by the release of substandard dreck a full 16 months after the release of Pet Sounds.  In the mid 60s when new sounds were exploding out of the speakers day by day/week by week...16 months was a century.  They were lost and forgotten.  And it was a self inflicted and needless injury brought about by 1... negativity to the extreme and 2... by the ever increasing mental disorder exacerbated, in large part, by that debilitating negativity.  Perhaps Brian would have toppled exactly as he did eventually as the illness took its toll.  But there were a couple of people involved in his next to daily existence who pushed the buttons which sped up his demise.

[sick and cruel.]

Don't interviews from the time period, including the one posted above, pretty much explain that the Smile album was shelved for the simplest of reasons: Brian Wilson gave up on it because he couldn't figure out how to get all of the pieces to fit together, and decided to start from scratch with a simpler project?

[Lee Marshall]

The truths about Smile were accompanied by at least as many lies/half-truths and a veritable ton of misdirection.  Sometimes facts, in retrospect, will help to differentiate the wheat from the chaff.

IF there are diamonds to be extricated from Smiley Smile...and there are...the fall of 1967 was NOT the time to mine them.  The 18 month wait...following Pat Sounds....coupled with THAT specific release concluded the funeral.  The Beach Boys would resurrect themselves but only for the lifelong fans and a few interested on-lookers.  No matter what they did from a recording group point of view their best days sales-wise were in the rearview.

[KDS]

One opinion that I've heard several times from people who were there at the time (I think Vosse and Anderele said it, I know Carol Kaye said it) was that Smile was going to blow Pet Sounds away. 

I do agree that parts of Smile are superior (ie  Surf's Up, Wonderful, Cabinessence, Our Prayer), but as a full piece, I'm sorry, but I don't think there's any contest. 

[Bicyclerider]

Dennis was quoted as saying Smile made Pet Sounds stink in comparison.

[Ang Jones]

Promotion of an album obviously precedes its release and so with SMiLE. What was being said and written was very teasing and intriguing and with every piece that should have been on SMiLE, the legend grew. In particular there was Cabinessence and then Cool Cool Water, both well in advance of Surf's Up. There's that famous quote about how if they entitled the album Surf's Up, they'd be able to guarantee the sale of so many copies. The legend was already in place. Surf's Up had a legend all of its own thanks to Bernstein.

[Don Malcolm]

In chronological order (I think) with relative value of myth-making for each event. YMMV.

--> Bernstein +25
--> Williams/Anderle in Crawdaddy +10
--> release of "Cabinessence" and "Our Prayer" on 20/20 +10
--> release of "Cool Cool Water" +5
--> release of "Surf's Up" on LP of same name +20
--> Nolan's RS article +25

[Dove Nested Towers]

One opinion that I've heard several times from people who were there at the time (I think Vosse and Anderele said it, I know Carol Kaye said it) was that Smile was going to blow Pet Sounds away. 

I do agree that parts of Smile are superior (ie  Surf's Up, Wonderful, Cabinessence, Our Prayer), but as a full piece, I'm sorry, but I don't think there's any contest. 

IMO you can't really compare a body of work that was aborted and never reached mature fruition for various reasons to one that was nurtured in a much more stable, supportive environment. Also, fantastic as Pet Sounds is, the Smile material is even more avant-garde and experimental, and even though it's more fragmentary in nature and not as linear, it's spurious to compare the two.

[clack]

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'.

[KDS]

One opinion that I've heard several times from people who were there at the time (I think Vosse and Anderele said it, I know Carol Kaye said it) was that Smile was going to blow Pet Sounds away. 

I do agree that parts of Smile are superior (ie  Surf's Up, Wonderful, Cabinessence, Our Prayer), but as a full piece, I'm sorry, but I don't think there's any contest. 

IMO you can't really compare a body of work that was aborted and never reached mature fruition for various reasons to one that was nurtured in a much more stable, supportive environment. Also, fantastic as Pet Sounds is, the Smile material is even more avant-garde and experimental, and even though it's more fragmentary in nature and not as linear, it's spurious to compare the two.

I think this is true.  For all we know, the "true" Smile may never be heard.  After all, I think we can all agree that there's a big difference between the Brian Wilson that worked in Smile in 1967, and the Brian Wilson that completed it in 2004. 

[KDS]

Smile became legendary immediately.  We Beach Boys fans had been blessed...perhaps even spoiled by a wealth of riches from 1963 onward.  
3 albums in 1963.
4 albums in 1964...including the first Concert record
3 albums in 1965...including Party
Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations in 1966.

So imagine what we were ready for in 1967!!!

They had just been named group of the year for '66 in the U.K.  The word was that Smile was coming any minute...and then the release was postponed...and then came Heroes and Villains and the release was killed.

WHAT !?!?!


As it turned out...we got the flippin' "bunt" instead of the "grand slam"...which only made one wonder what the hell had happened and what the PHUCK was this sh*t???  The logical progression was interrupted with foolishness.

I think Carl's baseball analogy was pretty apt, except in baseball a bunt, when well executed, can be a thing of beauty.  I think Smiley Smile is more like a bunt attempt that turns into a rally killing double play. 

Commercially, yes, but SS is a thing of beauty.

To each their own.  Outside of H&V and GV, I don't hear much beauty there. 

[MikestheGreatest!!]

I didn't really become that aware of Smile until the RS articles in I believe 1971 written by Tom Nolan.  I have not lived on the coasts so maybe it was written more about it there, but despite being a pretty big fan most of my life, I had never heard of Smile, its cancellation, etc by then.  So when Smiley Smile came out I had no theoretical Smile to hold it up against.  Despite that, it did seem like a very weird record at the time of its release and I didn't like it very much.  I suspect that is the general reaction of most in its time.

I now like it just fine, but still hold that it was very uncommercial and probably just not a good career move to have made at that particular point in time.  One wonders why they didn't just lay Lei'd on the record company at the time and said put it out or shut up, we simply don't have the next one ready yet.  Perhaps that would have bought extra time until WH or Smile could have been properly recorded.

But in the end, it was probably just a case of both Bri and the group being worn out by it all and just deciding to get that "Smile" monkey off their backs...

I listened to a lot of top forty in the late sixties and never once heard any jock speak derisively of any post-Pet Sounds singles because of the Smile "debacle".  In fact, I never heard the group really denigrated at all until like around 1969 and that was by members of the general public, not in the media.  I do remember mystifyingly occasionally seeing short articles in the local paper stating stuff like "Beach Boys third most popular group in the UK" per some poll, for like two or three years running there in the late sixties....it did strike me as weird how they could be so apparently popular over there while the same music over here was not exactly shifting units, except perhaps in the cut-out racks...

Speaking of cut-out racks, I remember one time being in Stix Baer and Fuller department store in St. Louis in 1983 and they had a separate record section that contained about sixty copies of Surf's Up, the vinyl album, for about $2.99 apiece.  By a separate record section I am not talking about the record department, it was like set up on its own in the middle of the men's clothing department or something (the memory is not what it once was, ha!).   This was rather mind blowing and made me wonder, did they really over-estimate its popularity to such an extent that they had a warehouse full of 'em somewhere even at that late date?  I've often wished I had bought a couple and kept them shrink-wrapped!

But yeah, I definitely think Smile was used by the group and the media to attempt to resurrect the group's career mainly around the time of the pending Surf's Up release.