Sunday 18 April 2010

Smile


By 1965 Brian Wilson had tired of the Beach Boys persona as a ‘fun in the sun’ band, singing about the beach, girls and good times. He wanted to experiment more musically and expand the scope of the band from it’s base of close harmonies and infectious hooks.
On the second side of ‘The Beach Boys Today!’ (1965) Wilson moved away from the up-beat songs that had defined the band up to this point and presented a series of melancholic ballads.
This didn’t affect the albums sales but did disturb some of the other Beach Boys and the groups record label. For ‘Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) (1965) Mike Love and Capitol Records sought assurances from Wilson that there would be a return to the carefree, happy-go-lucky style that had brought them such success.
On the surface Wilson appeared to accept this with songs such as ‘Amusement Parks USA’ and ‘California Girls’ but musically Wilson moved into new levels of symphonic sophistication and more complex arrangements of the songs.
Wilson then made a decision that the Beatles would also make a year later by making the Beach Boys a studio project. Rather than touring and promoting their music through concerts the Beach Boys would work from the studio and focus on new musical releases.
This would allow Wilson the time he needed to produce the more intricate music he wanted to without the demands of the road on the group as well.
The decision paid off almost immediately with ‘Pet Sounds’ (1966).
Featuring unconventional instrumentation from sources as unlikely as bicycle bells and dog whistles and dense layers of vocal harmony ‘Pet Sounds’ was a huge leap for ‘pop’ music.
However it was not the commercial smash that Capitol had hoped for.
‘Pet Sounds’ reached #10 in the American charts which, while far from a disaster, is put in perspective by the fact that their previous release ‘Beach Boys Party!’ (1965) reached #6 despite consisting entirely of cover versions.
However ‘Pet Sounds’ was a massive hit in the UK. It reached #2 in the chart there and became massively influential in British music circles.
The Beatles took huge inspiration from ‘Pet Sounds’ and their next release ‘Revolver’ (1966) was similarly groundbreaking. ‘Eleanor Rigby’ was a melancholic ballad featuring innovative orchestration while ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ had a backing track made up of tape loops that were randomly mixed from various parts of the recording studio.
While the Beatles were working on ‘Revolver’ Wilson had recorded ‘Good Vibrations’.
‘Good Vibrations’ was a single that eventually would be released at a length of three minutes and thirty seven seconds. It’s recording involved 17 sessions at 4 different studios, over 90 hours of tape and a budget of $50,000. Wilson has said that the recording of the elecro-theremin for the song cost $15,000 on it’s own.
Wilson saw this as a prototype for the recording of the new Beach Boys album ‘Smile’.
‘Smile’ was seen by Wilson as a ‘teenage symphony to God’ and would feature songs that were thematically and musically linked.
One of the major features of the album was to have been a suite of songs called ‘The Elements.’
These songs would be related to Earth, Air , Fire and Water but this is where the cracks in the project began to appear.
Wilson, who had began to show signs of mental fragility and had exhibited depresion and paranoia over the last few months became increasingly more unstable.
At a point where the sessions were proving challenging Wilson had ordered a sand pit be installed in the studio. He felt that having the ‘beach’ in the studio would inspire the group.
During the recording of the ‘Fire Suite’ for the album Wilson became increasingly obsessed with the song. He was frustrated by the groups inability to nail the recording and ordered them to wear toy firemen hats to focus on the song properly. Eventually, as the song took shape, Wilson managed to convince himself that the recording had caused a number of fires in the surrounding neighbourhood and ordered all the tapes of the session to be burned.
Wilson’s mental disintegration and opposition from within the group as to the value of the project meant that progress was very slow.
The next blow came when Wilson was driving in his car one day and the new Beatles single ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ came on the radio. Wilson pulled over to listen and when the song finished turned to his companion in the car and simply said ‘They got there first.’
On the 6th of May 1967 a press release was issued that ‘Smile’ was being shelved as a project by the Beach Boys.
On the 11th of September 1967 the new Beach Boys album was released. It was called ‘Smiley Smile’ and featured a number of tracks composed for the ‘Smile’ album.
Tellingly, for the first time the production of the album was credited to the group rather than Brian Wilson.
In 2004 Brian Wilson teamed up with his key collaborator on the original ‘Smile’ project Van Dyke Parks and members of his own touring band to record ‘SMiLE’.
This was an attempt by Wilson to reflect what the original album should have been.
Thematically and structurally it was closer to the spirit of the album as originally envisaged and the involvement of Parks was seen as vital by Wilson.
However the lack of any Beach Boys on the album angered former Beach Boy Mike Love who sued Wilson in 2005. Love maintained that the re-recording of Beach Boys songs caused millions of dollars in damages to a partnership between him and Wilson.
This lawsuit was thrown out of court by a federal judge in 2007 who determined that no such partnership existed between Love and Wilson at the time of the re-recordings and that none had existed for decades...

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