[atlantaprog] Look...Listen...Vibrate...

Here's one album that isn't dying, but undergoing a resurrection.

From the LA Times:

He Can't Suppress a 'Smile'
 Brian Wilson buried a musical masterpiece 37 years ago. His doubts now 
gone, the former Beach Boy has revived and reshaped the songs.

By Randy Lewis, Times Staff Writer


There's no surf, no sand, no little deuce coupes and only a couple of 
California girls in sight of the North Hollywood recording studio. 
Inside, the 61-year-old architect of "Good Vibrations," "Surfin' 
U.S.A." and "Fun, Fun, Fun" sits stoically at his keyboard, surrounded 
by a small army of musicians, and stares into one of two video monitors.

Song lyrics crawl across the screens as the other performers, most of 
whom weren't born when Brian Wilson's songs topped the charts four 
decades ago, serve up the densely layered vocal harmonies and rainbow of 
instrumental colors that his compositions require. 

 
Wilson frequently looks away from the monitors and occasionally switches 
them off, but likes them nearby as a safety net.

Who can blame him? The songs he's working on aren't the familiar rock 
hits he created with the Beach Boys, those relentlessly sunny tunes that 
painted a fantasy of Southern California life as an endless summer of 
perfect waves, hot rods and blond beauties.

Instead, he's putting the finishing touches on a work he dreamed up 38 
years ago, at the height of his creative rivalry with the Beatles.

After years of wrestling with depression and drug and alcohol abuse, 
after half a lifetime of trying to forget his fabled lost masterwork, 
Wilson can smile again.

"This feels so good," he says to a reporter when the session is over. 
"So good I can't believe it." 

Tonight, he'll unveil "Smile" at a concert in England, where fans have 
long accorded him the heroic status that Americans reserved for the 
Beatles. Paul McCartney is expected to join him on stage during at least 
one of six sold-out shows at London's Royal Festival Hall.

Over the next three weeks, Wilson will give 16 "Smile" concerts in 
Britain, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and France. He plans a U.S. 
tour in the fall to coincide with the CD release of the newly recorded 
work. 

To tens of thousands of pop fans, Wilson's completion of "Smile" is no 
less exhilarating than the discovery of a completed manuscript for 
Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony would be to classical music scholars. 

"I can hardly wait," says Rick Rubin, a producer who has worked with 
acts ranging from Johnny Cash and Tom Petty to the Red Hot Chili Peppers 
and the Beastie Boys.

Wilson, his hair now streaked with gray but still thick and full, has 
been touring regularly since 1998, something many pop fans never thought 
they'd see, given his history of emotional instability. 

Now they'll get the music that most never dreamed they would hear.

The Beatles' Rivals

Wilson was 24 when he went to work on the album he conceived as "a 
teenage symphony to God." Originally to be called "Dumb Angel" to 
reflect its themes of humor and spirituality, it was retitled "Smile." 

It was 1966, and a string of more than two dozen hit singles and 10 hit 
albums had made the Beach Boys, a band from Hawthorne, the most popular 
American group and the Beatles' chief rivals atop the sales charts. Pop 
music was going through a transformation in which the album was 
supplanting the three-minute single as the dominant format.

Wilson has long said he felt a sense of artistic competitiveness with 
the Fab Four. Each group has acknowledged the influence of the other.

The Beatles' 1965 album "Rubber Soul" inspired Wilson to move beyond the 
teen simplicity of the Beach Boys' early work to the musical maturity 
and emotional expressiveness of 1966's "Pet Sounds." The ambitions of 
"Pet Sounds" helped spur the Beatles to new heights in their next album, 
"Revolver."

Wilson was determined to top his rivals again with "Smile." He promised 
it would be as much of a progression over "Pet Sounds" as that was over 
its predecessor, "Beach Boys Party!"

"Smile" was expected at the end of 1966 — while the Beatles were working 
on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

Immediately after "Pet Sounds," Wilson created the band's most 
intricately crafted recording, "Good Vibrations," a song intended for 
"Smile." It became the Beach Boys' biggest hit up to that time, proof 
that there was a market for Wilson's increasingly sophisticated music. 

Wilson's further evolution with "Smile" stemmed from his collaboration 
with Van Dyke Parks, a Mississippi-born singer, songwriter, pianist, 
arranger and producer who had moved to Southern California in the 1950s. 

Parks brought a strong literary sensibility to the lyrics he wrote for 
"Smile," which he and Wilson envisioned as a work rooted in American 
history, culture and musical vernacular. It was to contain doses of 
comic-book humor reflecting the whimsicality of the dawning psychedelic 
age. (Jimi Hendrix once described what he'd heard of "Smile" as the 
music of "a psychedelic barbershop quartet.")

But Parks' impressionistic lyrics led to dissension among the Beach 
Boys. Mike Love, the band's front man during concerts, was particularly 
sensitive to pleasing fans and found Parks' lyrics obscure.

Other band members worried that "Smile's" musical sophistication 
wouldn't translate into radio hits. By then, Wilson had left behind the 
simple three-chord pop song in favor of careening melodies, 
unconventional chord progressions and shifting sonic textures.

Complicating the picture, the group was attempting to start its own 
label, Brother Records. As part of that move, the band sued Capitol 
Records. 

Capitol printed nearly half a million "Smile" album covers, anticipating 
the arrival of a master tape in fall 1966. But Wilson, working in the 
studio while the other Beach Boys were on tour, missed deadline after 
deadline as he continued polishing his work.

Lack of support from his band mates was a factor in the delay. But he 
also was feeling stress from the lawsuit and the weight of his 
responsibility for ensuring the livelihood of the ever-expanding Beach 
Boys family — on top of an ongoing struggle with his domineering, 
abusive and jealous father, Murry.

The final blow came in June 1967 with the release of "Sgt. Pepper's 
Lonely Hearts Club Band." Wilson had been bested by his rivals, and he 
scrapped "Smile." 

The band later came out with a watered-down version called "Smiley 
Smile," a faint echo of Wilson's original vision.

Myth Versus Fact

The fate of "Smile" has become legend. Although most of the world never 
heard the album, several influential musicians and journalists were 
allowed into some of the recording sessions in late 1966 and early 1967.

The idea that rock music might be considered art rather than merely 
entertainment was in its infancy. Yet no less an authority than Leonard 
Bernstein expressed admiration for the sophistication of "Surf's Up," 
one of "Smile's" cornerstone tracks, played for him as part of a CBS 
News documentary about a new generation of musicians.

Unlike the guessing game often played with legendary rockers who died 
prematurely — what music might Hendrix, Buddy Holly or Jim Morrison have 
made had they lived longer? — the fantasizing over "Smile" is based on 
more than wishful thinking.

Most of the album's songs had been recorded by the time Wilson abandoned 
the project. For years they lay dormant; reel upon reel of tape waiting 
to be stitched together and brought to life by their creator. 
Eventually, tantalizing bits and pieces surfaced, officially and 
unofficially. 

Books and countless articles have been written about Wilson's 
masterwork, and the theorizing has raged on via the Internet. One 
enterprising group in Europe came up with "Project Smile," a CD-ROM 
containing all the existing bits and pieces of the work, circulated for 
free among users worldwide. That do-it-yourself approach had been the 
closest possibility to a completed version, because Wilson long refused 
to even discuss it.

"Until about three years ago, you couldn't even mention 'Heroes and 
Villains' to Brian," Wilson biographer David Leaf said, referring to 
another key song from "Smile." Leaf is making a film documentary about 
the completion of the album.

But Wilson's attitude changed after the enthusiastic fan response to his 
performance of "Heroes and Villains" at a 2001 all-star tribute to his 
music in New York.

He has not simply dusted off songs intended for "Smile." He has reunited 
with lyricist Parks to structure the disparate pieces into a fully 
developed three-movement pop suite and craft a few new lyrics and 
musical links. 

Out of the Darkness

Wilson says he was able to revisit perhaps the darkest chapter of his 
past because "I have emotional security." 

He gets it from his wife of nine years, Melinda, the three children 
they've adopted, a team of doctors from UCLA that has diagnosed and 
helped him manage his depression, and a sympathetic group of musicians 
whose goal is to aid Wilson in realizing his musical vision.

After failing to deliver "Smile," the Beach Boys continued to produce 
acclaimed albums, but ceased to be a commercial force in pop music.

Wilson retreated from the world, and his musical output slowed to a 
trickle. Melinda Wilson believes that he was in the grip of a depression 
that went undiagnosed and untreated. 

"Like many people with depression who don't get proper treatment, he 
tried to medicate himself with drugs," she says.

His first wife, Marilyn, brought in Hollywood psychologist Eugene Landy 
to help Wilson in the 1970s. Landy lived 24 hours a day with Wilson, 
recommended medication (provided by one of Landy's associates who was an 
M.D.) and interceded in the Beach Boys artistic and business decisions. 

The band members and Wilson's relatives grew alarmed when Wilson rewrote 
his will to make Landy the main beneficiary. They filed suit against 
Landy, contending that the psychologist had taken over Wilson's life. In 
1991, a judge put the songwriter's affairs under the control of a court-
appointed conservator.

Melinda describes her husband's path back to "Smile" as consisting of 
many "baby steps." It started with his resumption of concert appearances 
in 1998, followed by a more ambitious tour in 2000 in which he and his 
new band performed "Pet Sounds" in its entirety.

Now, he says, at least privately to Melinda, the album he had formerly 
written off as "a mistake" is "the best work I've ever done."

It's not intended as a reconstruction of the album the world should have 
heard 37 years ago. "It's the way I feel about the music now," Wilson 
says.

And how does he feel about it now? "I think it's perfect."

Wilson talks about his music haltingly, at times giving clipped 
responses of "yes," "no" or "I can't answer that question"; at others 
offering simplistic-sounding explanations. (Asked how he and Parks 
composed "Wonderful," a "Smile" song that dazzles musicologists because 
it abandons the conventional notion of key signature, he says, "We did 
it through concentration.")

Such comments reflect his inherent shyness, Melinda says. But the 
impression that develops over the course of two interviews is that what 
he feels about his music is the music and that verbal explanations are, 
for Wilson, redundant.

Wilson doesn't appear concerned, nor does anyone in his entourage, that 
after 3 1/2 decades of analysis and debate, rumor and speculation, the 
myth will overshadow the music. 

"It's so far beyond what I would have imagined it could be," guitarist 
Jeffrey Foskett says after a complete run-through of "Smile" at 
rehearsal.

"The way I see it is that the Beach Boys' first 10 albums made them 
stars, 'Pet Sounds' made them great, and 'Smile' made Brian Wilson a 
legend. I just hope that in completing this, it gives him peace and lets 
him put this behind him after all these years."

In one of "Pet Sounds' " directly autobiographical songs, Wilson sang, 
"I guess I just wasn't made for these times." 

Now, he says, "I think the time is right."

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