The official Brian Wilson "SMiLE" thread

[AKA]

Brian Wilson
SMiLE
Warner Music Group
***** (5/5 stars)

Never mind Pet Sounds. Good record, but a totem. That leaves three great Beach Boys albums. First comes a fun-fun-fun best-of: With the canonical Endless Summer deleted, settle for 2003's longer, less pristine Sounds of Summer. The other two are quickies that fit neatly on one must-own CD: Buy Smiley Smile/Wild Honey while EMI lets you.

Smiley Smile and Wild Honey get respect now, but in 1967 they peeved hard-core Pet Sounds fans, who were waiting gape-mouthed for Smile, described by those in the know as the American Sgt. Pepper — proof that our Bea-boys belonged in the same league as their Bea-boys. But Brian went bonkers, Mike Love got busy, and we ended up with only "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes and Villains" — stopgap singles that made it onto the belittlingly titled Smiley Smile — and dribs and drabs thereafter.

Only you know what happened? Brian Wilson survived his saner brothers and rebuilt his career, which the completely rerecorded SMiLE is supposed to crown. Since much of Wilson's 2004 Gettin' In Over My Head could have been sung from a crypt, this seemed like a terrible idea. Instead, it's a triumph.

SMiLE began as a concert concept for Wilson's expert alt- rock road band, which by 2002 had exhausted Pet Sounds. Never completed, SMiLE existed only as a jumble of alternate versions, song fragments and ill-cataloged tapes. Sifting through these was a collaborator as crucial as lyricist Van Dyke Parks: keyboard player, harmony vocalist and "musical secretary" Darian Sahanaja. With Sahanaja and Parks jogging his memory, Wilson revised and composed until the best pieces formed a forty-seven-minute whole that started shortly before "Heroes and Villains" and climaxed with "Good Vibrations." While no symphony, it cohered and flowed. The sparer, simpler recorded version follows the pattern of the ecstatically reviewed live performances. Anchored by deft quotes and thematic repetitions, SMiLE is beautiful and funny, goofily grand. It's looser and messier than Sgt. Pepper and, one suspects, always would have been. But its sui generis Americanism counterbalances its paucity of classic pop songs. Not in the same league — just ready to play a World Series.

Although Parks is a well-traveled arranger who must have left some marks on Wilson's music during their hash-fueled 1966-67 brainstorming sessions, his words do the talking. They're poetic in a manner Wilson has no gift for: now idiomatic, now archaic, now obscure, pervaded by images of fleeting youth and a frontier that stretches to Hawaii. Although stoned confusion and mild pastoral pessimism are endemic, the world they evoke is as benign as a day at the beach - yet less simplistic (and deceptive) than the Beach Boys' fantasies of eternal Southern California teendom. In this the lyrics are of a piece with the jokey songlets of Smiley Smile, where five SMiLE titles first surfaced, and the good-natured rock & roll recidivism of Wild Honey. What elevates them into something approaching a utopian vision is Wilson's orchestrations: brief bridge melodies, youthful harmonies more precise and uplifting now than when executed by actually existing callow people and an enthralling profusion of instrumental colors. Trombone, timpani, theremin and tenor sax brush by and disappear; a banjo shows its head; strings vibe around; woodwinds establish unexpected moods and pipe down.

That the pros who surround Wilson are up to all of this is gratifying but not startling. What the auteur himself had in him was more questionable. And that's the central miracle of this gift of music. Wilson's voice has deepened and coarsened irreparably. Although he hits the notes, he can't convey the innocence SMiLE's content seems to demand. But he can convey commitment and belief — belief that his young bonkers self composed a work that captured possibilities now nearly lost to history. SMiLE proves that those possibilities are still worth pursuing.—Robert Christgau

[The Modfather]

Can't wait until I get it, glad to hear its good.

[AKA]

Originally posted by The Modfather
Can't wait until I get it, glad to hear its good.

You're going to love it. I've been waiting for an offiicial Smile release for years; ever since I heard my first SMiLE boot.

About a month ago, I would have told you I would have preferred the unfinished '66/'67 recording get an official release, but I've changed my tune after hearing the entire album. SMiLE 2004 is the last word on SMiLE!

[The Modfather]

Originally posted by AKA
You're going to love it. I've been waiting for an offiicial Smile release for years; ever since I heard my first SMiLE boot.

About a month ago, I would have told you I would have preferred the unfinished '66/'67 recording get an official release, but I've changed my tune after hearing the entire album. SMiLE 2004 is the last word on SMiLE!

I've been waiting for a month for this, I saw him on the "Ellen" talk show and he sounded great. Can't wait.

[AKA]

This album is absolutely breathtaking. It's already in my top five albums in the Beach Boys' catalog, group or solo.

[The Modfather]

Originally posted by AKA
This album is absolutely breathtaking. It's already in my top five albums in the Beach Boys' catalog, group or solo.

I agree, this album is amazing.

[vashti1999]

AKA, I suppose you already know about the Showtime special airing next week, "Beautiful Dream"?

[AKA]

Originally posted by vashti1999
AKA, I suppose you already know about the Showtime special airing next week, "Beautiful Dream"?

Yep. Unfortunately, I'm in kind of a financial bind right now and can't afford Showtime, so I'm going to miss it.

I'm sure it will come out on DVD down the road, though.

[musicradio77]

I have two Beach Boys' albums on vinyl, and the one on cassette. I might get the CD "Smile". This album was left over from the 1967 prepared album and it was never completed until Brian Wilson re-discovered it about 37 years later.

[AKA]

Our Prayer

Aah—oh—hm—

Heroes And Villains

I been in this town so long that back in the city I been
taken for lost and gone and unknown for a long, long time—

Fell in love years ago with an innocent girl from the
Spanish and Indian home of the Heroes and Villains

Once at night, cotillion squared, the fight, and she was right
in the rain of the bullets that eventually brought her down—

But she’s still dancing in the night unafraid of what
A dude’ll do in a town full of Heroes and Villains.

Heroes and Villains: Just see what you done-done
Heroes and Villains: Just see what you done-done

Stand or fall I know there shall be peace in the valley,
and it’s all an affair of my life with the Heroes and Villains.

In the cantina, Margarita keeps the spirits high.
There I watched her. She spun around and wound in
the warmth. Her body fanned the flame of the dance.

Dance Margarita! Don’t you know I love you!

My children were raised, you know they suddenly rise.
They started slow long ago, head to toe, healthy, wealthy and wise.

I been in this town so long, so long to the city
I’m fit with the stuff to ride in the rough—and Sonny,
down snuff, I’m alright by the Heroes and Villains.

Roll Plymouth Rock

Waving from the ocean liners,
beaded cheering Indians behind them.

Rock, rock, roll Plymouth Rock roll over
Ribbon of concrete—just see what you done—
done to the church of the American Indian!

Once upon the Sandwich Isle,
the social structure steamed upon Hawaii.
Rock, rock, roll Plymouth Rock roll over.

Bicycle rider, just see what you’ve done—
done to the church of the American Indian!

Rock, rock roll Plymouth Rock roll over. Mahalo lu le,
Mahalo lu la, Keeni waka pula (Repeat) Rock, rock, roll
Plymouth Rock roll over. Rock, rock, roll Plymouth Rock roll over.

Barnyard

Out in the barnyard, the chickens
do their number. Out in the barnyard,
the cook is choppin’ lumber.

Jump in the pig pen—next time I’ll take
my shoes off. Hit the dirt, do a two-&-a-half,
next time I’ll leave my hat off.

Old Master Painter/You Are My Sunshine

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.
You make me happy when skies are gray.
You’ll never know dear, how much I love you.
How could you take my sunshine away?

Cabin Essence

Light the lamp and fire mellow cabin essence;
timely hello welcomes the time for a change

Lost and found, you still remain there.
You’ll find a meadow filled with rain there.

I’ll give you a home on the range.

Who ran the iron horse?
Who ran the iron horse?

I want to watch you, windblown, facing waves of wheat
for your embracing. Folks sing a song of the grange.

Nestle in a kiss below there, the constellations ebb
and flow there and witness our home on the range.

Who ran the iron horse? Who ran the iron horse?

Have you seen the Grand Coulee workin’ on the railroad?
Over and over, the crow cried uncover the cornfield.
Over and over, the crow cries uncover the cornfield.

Wonderful

She belongs there left with her liberty.
Never known as a non-believer.
She laughs and stays in her one, one wonderful.

She knew how to gather the forest when
God reached softly and moved her body.

One golden locket, quite young and
loving her mother and father—

Farther down the path was a mystery.
Through the recess, the chalk and numbers.
A boy bumped into her one, one wonderful.

All fall down and lost in the mystery.
Lost it all to a non-believer, and all that’s left
is a girl who’s loved by her mother and father.

She’ll return in love with her liberty.
Just away from her non-believer, she’ll
sigh and thank God for one, one, wonderful.

Song For Children

Maybe not one. Maybe you too, a wonderin’.
Wonderin’ who. Wonderful you, a wonderin’.

Child—the child, Father of the Son. Where is the Father, Son.
Where is the wonderful me/wonderful you.

Tho’ I know I’m won’t to wonderin’ nevermind,
wonderful you. I can’t stop a-wonderin’.
Never you mind, wonderful you!

Child-the child, Father of the Son.

Child Is Father Of The Man

Child-the child, Father of the man.

Easy my child—it’s just enough to believe.
Out of the wild—into what you can conceive.
You’ll achieve. Child-the child, Father of the man.

Surf’s Up

A diamond necklace played the pawn
Hand in hand, some drummed along
to a handsome mannered baton.

A blind class aristocracy.
Backed through the op’ra glass you see
the pit and the pendulum drawn.

Columnated ruins domino!

Canvas the town and brush the back-drop.
Are you sleeping?

Hung velvet over taking me.
Dim chandelier awaken me.
To a song dissolved in the dawn.

The music hall—A costly bow.
The music all is lost for now,
to a muted trumpeter swan.

Columnated ruins domino!

Canvas the town and brush the back-drop.
Are you sleeping? Brother John?

Dove nested towers—
The hour was strike the street, quicksilver moon.

Carriage across the fog-two step to
lamplight cellar tune.

The laughs come hard
in Auld Lang Syne.

The glass was raised, the fired-roast.
The fullness of the wine.
A dim last toasting.
While at Port, adieu or die.

A choke of grief, heart-hardened eye,
beyond belief, a broken man too tough to cry.

Surf’s up! Aboard a tidal wave.
Come about hard and join the young
and often spring you gave.

I heard the word. Wonderful thing! A children’s song.
A children’s song—have you listened as they play?
Their song is love and the children know the way.

I’m In Great Shape

Fresh clean air around my head.
Morning tumble out of bed. Eggs and grits
and lickety split. Look at me jump!
I’m in the great shape of the agriculture!

Workshop

I wanna be around
to pick up the pieces, when somebody
breaks your heart. When somebody
breaks your heart in two.

Vege-Tables

I’m gonna be ‘round my vegetables.
I’m gonna chow down my vegetables.
I love you most of all, my favorite vegetable.

If you bought a big brown bag
of them home, I’d jump up and down
and hope you’d toss me a carrot—

I’m gonna keep well, my vegetables.
Cart off and sell my vegetables.
I love you most of all, my favorite vegetable.

I tried to kick the ball, but my tennie
flew right off. I’m red as a beet
‘cause I’m so embarrassed.

Sleep a lot, eat a lot, brush ‘em like crazy.
Run a lot, do a lot, never be lazy.
Sleep a lot, eat a lot, brush ‘em like crazy.
Run a lot, do a lot, never be lazy.
Dad a dad a...

I threw away my candy bar and I ate
the wrapper. And when they told me
what I did, I burst into laughter.

I know you’ll feel better, when you send us in your letter.
And tell us the name of your… Your favorite vegetable.

On A Holiday

A pirate with a tune on a holiday.
Ol’ lazy mister moon want a getaway.
And isn’t that a moon for a milky way?

A ukulele lady—a roundelay. Rock, rock roll Child!
Rock, rock roll, Plymouth Rock roll over.
For a holiday—with a roundelay.

Abaft and forth—a starboard course with
north abeam, sherry of course. The men
will share some sport ah-now me hearty!
Not the rum of Carib scum. It’s Port
tonight, drink up and come. Un-weigh
the anchor yank and we will party!

A shanty town—a chanty in Waikiki. And juxtapose
a man with a mystery. A blue Hawaiian capture
his melody. And Liliuola Kalani will sing to me.

Rock, rock roll, Child! Rock, rock roll, Plymouth Rock roll over.
For a holiday. Long, long ago… Long ago.

Whisperin’ winds send my
wind chimes a-tinklin’.

Whisperin’ winds send my
wind chimes a-tinklin’.

Wind Chimes

Hanging down from my window, those are my wind chimes.
On the warm breeze, the little bells tinkle like wind chimes.
Though it’s hard, I try not to look at my wind chimes.
Now and then a tear rolls down my cheek.

Close your eyes and lean back and listen to wind chimes.
In the late afternoon, you’re hung up on wind chimes.
Though it’s hard, I try not to look at my wind chimes..

Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow
(fire)

Instrumental

In Blue Hawaii

Is it hot as hell in here, or is it me?
It really is a mystery. If I die before I wake,
I pray the lord my soul to take my misery—
I could really use a drop to drink.
Somewhere in a placid pool and sink.
Feel like I was really in the… PINK!

I lose a dream when I don’t sleep. I’m slumberin’.
There’s still a promise we must keep—I’m wonderin’.

A wah ha wah—Hawaii. A wah ha wah—Hawaii
lay beyond the sea. A wah ha wah—Hawaii.

Oh I could use a drop to drink right now.
In a waterfall, back there in Hawaii—
Take me to a luau now and lay before me.
Wholly Holy Cow!

Down in blue Hawaii. So far away from
blue Hawaii. Aloha nui means goodbye.

Good Vibrations

I—I love the colorful clothes she wears. And she’s already
workin’ on my brain. I—I only looked in her eyes, but I picked
up something I just can’t explain.

I’m pickin’ up good vibrations,
she’s giving me excitations.

Good, good, good—good vibrations.

I—I bet I know what she’s like.
And I can feel how right she’d be for me.

It’s weird, how she comes in so strong.
And I wonder what she’s pickin’ up from me?

(repeat chorus)

I don’t know where but she sends me there—
Ah my my, what a sensation!
Ah, my my, what an elation!

Gotta keep those lovin’ good
vibrations a-happenin’ with her.

Ahh—Good, good, good—good vibrations.

[AKA]

Lost and now found, Wilson's 'Smile' beams

By Tom Moon
The Philadelphia Inquirer

In the last two decades, new music from Brian Wilson has meant a trip in the time machine.

As he has slowly returned to music after a long exile of substance abuse and incapacitating mental illness, the rock pioneer has written songs that emulate the sun-dappled innocence of his enduring Beach Boys odes.

He has copied the keening, caramel-creme California harmonies, affirmed a post-Eisenhower ideal of courtship, and used new recordings (including this year's Gettin' In Over My Head) to hark back to the hookcraft he honed in the early '60s.

The efforts have been technically impressive - several years ago, Wilson assembled a touring band of Beach Boys obsessives who help him re-create every last "Sloop John B" shoop. But those efforts have also been a little sad: The nostalgia merchant in him wants desperately to beam everyone to the idealized realm of "Wouldn't It Be Nice," while the musician in him knows that this going backward is futile.

His latter-day records offer isolated moments of great beauty, but they're time-capsule moments, impressive for their resemblance to other long-ago peaks. They're oddly ritualized, sometimes empty throwbacks.

So there's reason to be apprehensive about the new Brian Wilson Presents Smile (Nonesuch 4.5/5 stars), due out Tuesday, Sept. 28. It's Wilson's re-creation of a project he and lyricist Van Dyke Parks began shortly after the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds astounded the world in 1966. Intended as a break with his past, Smile was more ambitious and less linear than anything Wilson had done, and he abandoned the work, in apparent frustration, just before it was to be released.

Since then, Smile has existed mainly as a mythic footnote, one of the great "lost" projects in rock history. Some of the songs from the sessions - "Heroes and Villains," "Cabinessence," "Good Vibrations" - were singles, and turned up on subsequent Beach Boys albums. But the work was intended to be a whole, and even the bootlegged versions that have been commonly available were incomplete, or not presented in what became Wilson's final sequence.

This sumptuously orchestrated new version of Smile, which spreads its 17 tracks into three parts, corrects all that even as it invites new questions.

If Wilson hasn't been convincing creating fresh pieces modeled on the old, how can he expect to sell a scattered series of song fragments, with defiantly nonsensical lyrics, that baffled some friends and earned him the ridicule of his bandmates when it was created? What makes anyone think that something considered indulgent in its day will somehow seem less so when dusted off and brought into the ever-more-cynical present?

It takes about 30 seconds into the new recording for those questions to be rendered irrelevant.

Smile opens with an a cappella vocal ensemble soaring above the trees, transporting the wordless "Our Prayer/Gee" to some hallowed place of worship by the sea. Occupying center stage is the familiar close-knit Beach Boys harmony, only it's more grandiose. More adult. The intertwined voices rise up, a feast of chordal "ohhs" and "ahhs" resolving in unexpected ways. But these are not defrosted versions of the master's 1967 scribblings; what comes out is a timeless natural wonder - a sound as majestic as a mountain, resonating for the ages.

Smile is full of those disarming, powerful moments. Wilson was 24 when he wrote this music, and despite the near-universal acclaim showered on his multitracked masterpiece, Pet Sounds, he was withdrawing into himself, composing at a piano in a sandbox in his living room while ingesting drugs and, if the accounts of those around him are credible, zoning out.

What he came up with was a curious art statement, an attempt at escaping what he considered the confining cliches of the Beach Boys with lyrics that were oblique riddles and idle curiosities. That wasn't the only change: Instead of recurring verse-chorus forms (a la "I Get Around"), his new songs were intricate pieces with many sections, each notable for its own jaw-droppingly beautiful melody.

He called those compositions, best typified by "Good Vibrations," "teenage symphonies to God," and that's accurate: They're episodic marvels, moments of cooing quiet followed by fireworks. The fragments are each beautiful in isolation, yet become magnified when put together, a succession of impossibly uplifting recurring motifs, each reaching higher than the last.

Though Wilson patterned the current arrangements on the original tapes, the new work extends his text - not just with marimba and tympani and other orchestral trappings, but also through the very character of his voice, which now exhibits a touch of experience.

He might have started out trying to duplicate something, but eventually Wilson took the iconic sounds he'd created long ago - vocals inextricably linked with the Friday night cruise and the surfin' safari and being true to your school - and gave them a resonance beyond the endless summer.

Smile echoes the feeling of limitless possibility running through all the great Beach Boys singles, then adds a new dimension - every now and then a slightly puzzled 62-year-old man peeks through the serene plushness, his voice hardened just enough to keep these breezy reveries close to Earth.

There are many marvels inside Smile. It's laudable that Wilson revisited the work, and amazing that his rhapsodic themes not only endure, but blossom so vividly in this sublime, carefully sculpted atmosphere.

Almost every one of the melodic motifs - with the exception of the gimmicky "Vega-Tables" and "I'm in Great Shape" - is the equal, in terms of sheer grace, of the sprawling orchestrations and outsized sonic tableaus. Even pieces we know by heart, such as "Good Vibrations," become elevated by the small touches - cellos rather than surf guitars handle the surging triplets, executing with a precision and force that sends the rhythm careening ever forward.

You might end up preferring the original version that blasted from the speakers at the pool all these years, but this one is essential listening all the same - as a quintessential expression of youth recast by experienced hands, an auteur's rare second chance to realize a vision that once slipped out of his grasp.

It does what Wilson's latter-day efforts haven't - it sends out good vibrations that aren't a carbon-copy echo, but exist on their own, entirely different frequency.

[AKA]

Brian Wilson Smiles

The Beach Boys genius returns to pick up the pieces

By Jason Fine
Rolling Stone

Brian Wilson is waiting in the driveway of his Mediterranean-style Beverly Hills house, dressed entirely in brown corduroy, bouncing on his toes. "Let's go!" he says, jumping into the car. "Go down here, make a U-turn, I'll give you directions." His silvery brown hair is uncombed, and he's unshaven, in a relaxed, Sunday-afternoon way. His face is tan; his smile is gentle, easy. Wilson looks good. "We don't have to introduce each other, because we've met before," he says.

"So, how you been?"

"Good. How about you?"

"I'm good," he says. "I'm great. Doing a lot of work. It's a big relief - whew! - because, you know, I've been through some rough times in my head, but I've been fighting it off."

Wilson is more active now than he's been since the Beach Boys were America's top group in the mid-Sixties. He tours relentlessly with his superb band; he released a solo album this summer, Gettin' In Over My Head, with cameos from Elton John and Paul McCartney; and now he's preparing to put out what may be his crowning achievement: an entirely new recording of the legendary, unfinished Smile, which was scrapped in 1967 and has become the most famous unheard album in rock history.

Launched as the follow-up to the Beach Boys' classic Pet Sounds - and in response to the Beatles' masterful Rubber Soul and Revolver - Smile was intended to be the grandest, most complex rock & roll production ever: a loosely themed concept album about coast-to-coast "Americana," from Plymouth Rock to "Blue Hawaii," built from modular, cut-and-paste fragments of pop melody, orchestral instrumentation, recurring vocal themes and even the sounds of crunching vegetables and barnyard animals. Wilson, then twenty-four, described his epic musical tapestry as a "teenage symphony to God."

Wilson's ambition, however, was undercut by intensifying, untreated mental illness as well as by drug use (including hashish and amphetamines) and pressure from the other Beach Boys and the group's label, Capitol, to stop messing around and start cranking out hits. Beach Boy Mike Love was the harshest critic, reportedly calling Smile "a whole album of Brian's madness."

Wilson's behavior became erratic and paranoid. His Smile collaborator, the lyricist Van Dyke Parks, remembers going into Wilson's swimming pool fully clothed for a business meeting, because Wilson was afraid his house was bugged by his controlling father, Murry. One night, while recording a section of his "Elements" suite about fire called "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow," Wilson distributed plastic fireman's helmets to the orchestra and lit a small fire in the studio so they could smell smoke. Later, Wilson learned that a building near the studio burned down and that there had been several other fires across Southern California. Wilson believed his music caused the fires, and he immediately stopped work on the song and locked the tapes away in a vault.

By May 1967, after more than eighty recording sessions, Wilson's masterwork was unraveling, and so was he. Smile was abandoned. Its best tracks - "Heroes and Villains," "Wonderful," "Surf's Up" - turned up on subsequent Beach Boys albums such as Smiley Smile; bootleggers tried to piece together the rest.

Some say Wilson never recovered from the monumental disappointment of Smile's failure. "He was a man so lonely and so abused and maligned, ostracized," says Parks. "It was an outrage what he suffered."

Today he won't say much about that time except that Smile "was too far ahead of its time, so I junked it." Until recently, he didn't seem interested in revisiting the work ("Bad music, bad memories," he told me in 2001), but a year and a half ago, looking for a new live project, Wilson's wife, Melinda, suggested trying Smile, and his bandleader, Darian Sahanaja, began to organize the project. "It took courage," says Wilson over steaks and Heinekens at the Mullholland Grill, near his house. "We worked on it little by little, week by week, until finally we got it right."

"You can hear that Brian has a glimmer," says Parks, who worked with Wilson on the new SMiLE (differentiated in typography from the original Smile). "That is what I think is wonderful about this project. . . . It bathes Brian in some real redemptive light. It shows that he is very generous and very talented, and that he uses his talent to console, in a powerful way."

Work on the new "SMiLE" began in the fall of 2003. Sahanaja showed up at Wilson's house one morning with all the existing fragments of Smile he could find (both from bootlegs and the Capitol vaults) loaded onto his iBook. "I knew Smile is not Brian's favorite topic," says Sahanaja. "And he had a look, like he was looking over the edge of the Empire State Building with no support."

At first, Wilson offered little reaction. "He was quiet for a long time," says Sahanaja. "Then I played him 'Do You Like Worms?' and I thought he was going to freak out. But he went, 'That's pretty cool. We did that?' And it just started going, grouping different sections and songs together."

To Sahanaja's amazement, Wilson began to remember harmonies and arrangements that were never recorded. At one point, they were working on a portion of "Do You Like Worms?" (now renamed "Roll Plymouth Rock"), and Wilson couldn't read Parks' thirty-eight-year-old lyric sheet. "We just couldn't figure it out," says Sahanaja. "Brian goes, 'Van Dyke will know.' So he picks up the phone - hasn't called Van Dyke in years - goes, 'Yeah, Van Dyke. It's Brian. Do you know the song "Do You Like Worms?" What's this line?' " The next morning, Van Dyke Parks showed up at Wilson's house to begin five days of work.

Parks says his main goal was to bring Smile out of the past, to make it the work of a man looking back at his younger days, not to try and simply re-create material thirty-seven years old. "It was important that this not arrive irrelevant and brain-dead," he says. Parks made mostly subtle changes. At the start of "In Blue Hawaii," for example, Parks added the line "Is it hot as hell in here? Or is it me?/It really is a mystery." "These words reveal Brian in the present tense," says Parks, "reflecting on this situation that happened to him all those years ago."

The new SMiLE was first performed by Wilson on tour in the U.K. in February, to rave reviews, then recorded at Sunset Sound and Your Place Or Mine studios in Los Angeles. It wasn't always easy. "Darian's a perfectionist - he henpecks me," Wilson says. "It's hard work, but it's worth it." Adds Sahanaja, "Sometimes Brian was a little impatient. He would say, 'What do we need to do next? When am I getting my steak?' Sometimes I think he would have rather stayed at home, and, technically, he didn't have to be there a lot of the time. But he showed up, and, man, it was such a difference. Just his goofy way. We'd do a really beautiful version of 'Surf's Up.' We'd get to the last chord, and we're all there with our headphones on and we'd hear him scream, 'Right the **** on!' That's so inspiring for us musicians."

Tonight it's hard to tell how excited Wilson is about SMiLE, but he's definitely excited about dinner. "They have an excellent salad here; I think you should get it," he advises, then calls the waitress over and orders two iceberg-and-blue-cheese salads and two ribeye steaks, medium rare.

Wilson seems relaxed - or as relaxed as I've seen him in recent years - as he drinks beer and talks about his courtside seats to the Lakers playoff games and about his four-month-old adopted son, Dylan. (Just saying Dylan's name makes Brian burst out laughing.) "Life's better than it's been in the past twenty years," he says.

Still, he admits that he works hard to keep depression at bay. "Every day I have an anxiety attack," he says. "I can't explain why. It just comes on." He takes medication for anxiety and depression, and he sees a therapist three times a week. "I'm in bad mental shape, so I need it," he says. A routine of work and exercise helps, too. Each morning before doing anything else, he spends an hour at the piano. He says he's written three new songs in the past week. "The creative process blows me out," he says. "It's an amazing trip. Amazing. Just amazing. I'm older, wiser, more knowledgeable than I used to be, so I can get it together pretty quick."

He smiles, stares off for a while, gulps his Heineken, then looks up at me with pale greenish-blue eyes. "I'll tell you something I've learned," he says. "It's hard work to be happy."

[AKA]

SMiLE premiered at number 7 on the UK album charts.

[vashti1999]

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Picking up good vibes

Two and a half stars out of four

In one way or another, virtually everything Brian Wilson has done over the last 37 years has been some form of therapy.
It's hardly the life he would have chosen, as this new documentary on the resurrection of his aborted "Smile" album makes clear.

But it's the life he has, and for better or worse, Brian's mental and emotional fragility again casts a long shadow over his music, which remains rich and satisfying - all the things, this documentary reminds us, Brian's life often has not been.

By the early '60s, Brian was writing huge, happy hit songs for one of America's great rock 'n' roll bands, the Beach Boys. By the mid-'60s, he was working on higher musical ambitions, which he started to tackle with the acclaimed "Pet Sounds" album.

He aimed even higher with "Smile." He worked for months and released "Good Vibrations," the lead single. Then a series of small discouragements led him to abandon the project.

For years he wouldn't talk about "Smile."

Last year, a series of small encouragements pushed him to revisit and finally finish it. He played its songs live in London last February, and that's the climax of this documentary: playing "Good Vibrations" for a wildly appreciative audience that included Brian's old friend Paul McCartney.

"Beautiful Dreamer" is presented as the happy ending to the "Smile" story, and certainly Brian seems pleased, which can't be bad.

Still, the documentary/movie leaves key questions unanswered - including the quality of the "Smile" music. While we hear bits, pieces and rehearsal moments from several songs, we'll need more evidence to say whether "Smile" lives up to its reputation, meaning Brian's newly recorded CD of "Smile" is a useful companion piece.

"Beautiful Dreamer" also hits a couple of startling biographical notes.

It says he was born deaf in one ear, for instance, whereas other biographers have agreed he lost that hearing when he was cuffed by his father, Murray. It also has several people saying drugs were not a big contributor to Brian's problems - an arguable theory perhaps, but again, one that counters previous biographical consensus.

The show trips lightly over the years between 1967 and 2003, not mentioning the long stretches when he was a full-time ward of controversial therapist Eugene Landy.

True, there's little point in dwelling on sad interludes, but for purposes of the "Smile" story, there's also no getting around the fact that when he abandoned that record, he left the creative mountain he'd been scaling and hasn't been back to since. That's part of the story, too.

On the brighter side, Brian's perseverance and resilience are inspiring. But the peaks of "Beautiful Dreamer" come when it plunges into the music, whether it's wordless harmonies or Brian showing on the piano how a chord came to life.

Those are the moments when you hope that at some point, Brian Wilson will get as happy an ending in his life as he gets on "Beautiful Dreamer."

[AKA]

Interesting review, Vashti. Thanks.