Lost and Found: The Significance of Smile by Peter Reum

LOST AND FOUND: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SMILE

By Peter Reum
MUSIC IS THE VOICE OF GOD……

From 1966 through 1967, the man who invented California Music flew too close to the sun. The long power dive that was Smile was a difficult experience for Rock’s first Renaissance Musician. Brian Wilson eventually pulled out of the dive in 2004, but that is another story. The essence of Smile began with him having an idea to create an album that expressed the wonder he felt from spiritual experiences he had in the creation and expression of music. He felt that a creative window to heaven had opened to him during Pet Sounds, and he wanted to continue the momentum that started with that album. By 1966, despite the fact that the record company and radio programmers continued to stereotype The Beach Boys as the number one Surf and Hot Rod group in the country, the band had long since outgrown that image, both as individuals and musically. Brian, at home in the studio, was in a phase of his career where he was growing so fast as an artist that almost nobody could comprehend what was going on. 

Brian had revelations while under the influence of LSD in 1965 that helped him envision many of the fundamental ideas that led to the music he recorded from Summer of 1966 to Summer of 1967. To say that his orientation to spirituality was altered would be an understatement. Brian’s creativity had been expanding at a pace that had drawn the attention of musicians around the world. Brian mentioned to Andrew Loog Oldham, producer of the Rolling Stones that he wanted to create “music people will pray to.” The Beatles heard Pet Sounds and raved about it. The British public agreed so much that at year’s end in a British music publication, The Beach Boys were voted the most popular group in the world in a 1966 poll.

The Sixties were concerned with human potential, spirituality in its many variations and expressions, war and peace, the virtues of indigenous cultures versus modern Western consumer culture, the growing pollution of the Earth’s air, water, and land, and the changing face of how people in differing parts of the world related to each other. There was a new, open approach to human experience, and Brian was in its forefront. He had these things on his mind. He had read books about Native American Cultures and their love of the Earth. He was reading about how people’s spirituality was expressed creatively. He read about families, and how they interacted both in a healthy and an unhealthy manner. 

There was also Brian’s whole approach to humor. Brian would do anything to make people laugh. He was interested in humor, and how it connected to healing the pain that people feel. Humor, he believed was a healing form of divine love, the path to fulfillment in human experience. Most of all, Brian was interested in why human beings do the things people do and how that interplayed with their sense of the eternal. Brian saw his musical gift as a gesture of healing love from God. By using his gift, Brian saw himself as spreading love, which reflected his belief that laughter is a gift from God, a healing manifestation of our connection with what is eternal. From what I have seen in recent years, Brian still holds these beliefs to be true today.

Brian’s interests had formed in response to the events of the times in which Dumb Angel, later Smile, was conceived. Dumb Angel was born in that heady post Pet Sounds period, the Summer of 1966. Brian recruited a group of people to help him create what he hoped would be a new album that would bring a new spirituality to popular music. As was his long term practice, Brian engaged top flight musicians to interpret the ideas he heard in his head and worked to convert into sound. Brian and The Beach Boys added their incomparable vocals to Brian’s increasing intricate and beautifully arranged tracks. 

FLYING INTO THE FRONTIERS OF MUSIC’S POTENTIAL

Brian explored new ways of using the recording studio itself as an instrument. Several studios were used. Each studio had its own strengths and sounds. Brian began experimenting with what he called “feels.” Feels were ideas in sound that later came to be called “modules.” Modules lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes were recorded at various Los Angeles studios, and Good Vibrations was the first Brian Wilson song which employed this new modular approach. Good Vibrations was assembled from recordings from the cream of L.A.’s studios of the time. Sections came from Gold Star, Sunset Sound, RCA, Western, and Columbia. Each studio had a different sound, and the challenge of assembling these short sections of music into a finished, polished, and most importantly, commercial single led to it being the most expensive single of its time. Brian’s incredible ear (he is deaf in his other ear) helped him put together the modules of Good Vibrations into a unified whole despite radically different sounds from each studio that had to be assembled into a complete record.

Brian’s instincts were at their most attuned during Good Vibrations in the Smile Era recordings. The disc included in this set is but a small fraction of the numerous sessions that were held for this most monumental of productions. Brian in 1976 referred to it as “a pocket symphony” and “the biggest production of our lives.” When Good Vibrations hit AM radio it was completely unique…several publications screamed that “they’ve found the new sound at last.” Michael Love’s lyrics complemented Brian’s beautiful and modularly assembled rhythmic track, and the theremin weaving in and out was one of the first prominent uses of electronic instrumentation in pop music. Good Vibrations was named as the best 45 ever in a number of publications reviewing singles in the Rock Era in subsequent decades.

Throughout the Summer and Autumn of 1966, the modules Brian recorded were inspired by the things he read, saw, and felt while spending time with his new group of friends and supporters. This group of young men (including Van Dyke Parks, David Anderle, Michael Vosse, and Paul Jay Robbins) exposed Brian to new ideas and concepts which changed him forever. He was able to listen to people articulate many of the things that occupied his heart. Added to this new consciousness was Brian’s concern that the lyrics for Dumb Angel and later Smile would need to reflect the growing literary sophistication that artists such as Bob Dylan and The Beatles were recording. In the language of the period, eloquently articulated by Jules Siegel in his excellent article about the Smile Era, “Goodbye Surfing, Hello God,” Brian wanted to be “HIP.” He wanted to be someone who not only was in the forefront of culture on the FM band, but was making popular hits on AM radio as well. In popular music, the domination of AM radio was ebbing into a new format centered around FM radio, and disc jockeys were playing a Rolling Stones album side or a Miles Davis album next to a Bob Dylan album track. Brian was aware this new free form FM format, and wanted to be a part of it. 

With Van Dyke Parks on board, being “HIP” became plausible in Brian’s estimation. Brian’s Dumb Angel concept evolved into Smile, with the plan being to create an album that would have the lyrical complexity of a Dylan or Lennon lyric, combined with the musical sophistication of avant garde Rock Music of the period. Smile was to eclipse Pet Sounds and create a new marriage of sophisticated music, arrangements, and lyrics that would lead popular music into a new sense of what was the best about humanity….our capacity to create, to laugh at ourselves and heal our pain, and to explore the wonders of our spirituality in a number of different modalities…sound, video, and poetry.

Brian envisioned using the creative freedom and spiritual inspiration he enjoyed to explore a new form of American Music. From high school forward, his musical education expanded. He had a strong background in church choir music. jazz and pop music of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and an intuitive grasp of the possibilities of marrying rock, jazz, pop, and sacred music. He knew and loved such composers as Bach, Beethoven, Gershwin, and songwriters such as Stephen Foster, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter. Rhythm and Blues Music and Jazz were a part of the beloved listening experiences as a teenager that he remembered . Brian wanted to reinterpret the American Experience to reflect his concerns with ecology, the loss of Native American Cultures, families and how they relate, and his encounters with God. 

Dozens of sessions that fall and winter produced interchangeable yet diverse modules that were hailed by people who heard them at the time as beautiful and almost cinematic in their ability to ignite the imagination of their listeners. As Fall 1966 passed into Winter 1967, literally dozens of these modular feels in sound existed, and songs such as Heroes and Villains, Surfs Up, Wonderful, Wind Chimes, Roll Plymouth Rock (Do You Like Worms), Child Is Father to the Man, Cabin Essence, and others became candidates for inclusion on Smile. The so-called “sandbox songs”…Heroes and Villains, Wonderful, Cabin Essence, and Surfs Up…. became major centerpieces of Brian’s themes in Smile. 

THERE ARE NO LIMITS

Brian’s ideas grew exponentially. Ideas were floated about a humor album, an album about nature, and skits were recorded that were an anticipation of later Firesign Theater and Monty Python recordings. Chants and surreal skits were played out by The Vosse Posse and later The Beach Boys. Michael Vosse was sent out to record water in all of its various types of sound expressions. Brian became increasingly alarmed about pollution, and recorded a rant about Smog that was prophetic in its reflection of peoples’ frustration with the Brown Cloud in the L.A. Basin in the Sixties.

But as Winter turned into Spring 1967, Brian’s incredible imagination led to a cascade of sequencing and resequencing of modules. His continued recording of new modules made these decisions even more difficult. The demand for a single led to extensive recording of modules for Heroes and Villains and Vege-Tables, which he could not sequence in an order that satisfied him. This difficulty finding a sequence for Smile or for a single to follow Good Vibrations was compromised by the technical limitations of that time, and by his growing doubt in The Beach Boys’ ability to perform the music he was recording. Brian became overwhelmed in the detail of the very modules of the “feels” he recorded for Smile. Conflict inside and outside the studio began to deflate the momentum for Smile. His love of the music he made was compromised by his uncertainty that the world would understand what he wanted to communicate. Toward Smile’s end, Brian’s difficulty in explaining what he envisioned and his limitations in the technology he was working with became utterly exhausting. Additionally, Dennis Wilson, Carl Wilson, and Bruce Johnston were growing in their ambition and desire to apply what they had learned in studio craft from observing Brian in his arrangements and production of Beach Boy records.

After Brian retired  from the road in 1965, The Beach Boys (Michael Love, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Bruce Johnston, and Alan Jardine) had to become brilliant vocal and instrumental interpreters of Brian’s music in concert and in the studio. In live shows, the Beach Boys performances became increasingly intricate as Brian’s compositions used more complex instrumental and vocal arrangements. Brian’s desire to replicate the music he heard in his head made him increasingly attentive to how The Beach Boys should  sound live..

REEVALUATION AND FRUSTRATION

In March 1967, Brian took a break from recording for most of a month. He reassessed his band’s competitive position vis-à-vis The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and other artists of the period. He came back and tried without success to make Vege-Tables the next single. The band, as they had throughout Smile, came into the studio and recorded vocals that were stunning in their beauty. As late as  early June 1967, Brian was trying to work on concepts related to Smile. But there was still a single needed, and an album was long overdue…with Smile’s original release date having been December of 1966. The project was set aside, and the legend began.

Pieces of the modules were either rerecorded or reassembled through albums after Smile. Several songs, such as Wonderful, were redone for Smiley Smile using a modular approach. The stunning Heroes and Villains single was released, also using modular production. 15 years later, modular production became a hallmark of Rock Music production, as analog technology changed into digital editing. Brian, as he had been so many times, was years ahead of his time. 

Brian’s modular Smile music showed up in tidbits on later Beach Boys albums. On Smiley Smile, there were the backwards laughs on the tag of Vegetables, and newly recorded versions of With Me Tonight and Whistle In became entire songs. Mama Says on Wild Honey was another rerecorded module. The horn charts of Little Bird used horns charts from Child is Father to The Man. Our Prayer and Cabinessence were on 20/20. Sunflower offered the Water Chants in Cool Cool Water. Brian’s  track from Surfs Up appeared on the first half of that album’s release of the title song. Brian’s vocal and piano on the second half of Surfs Up were another example of the majesty of Smile. 

By 1976, Brian ended a break of 8 years from being The Beach Boys primary producer, and his interviews throughout the Seventies always included the dreaded questions about Smile. The Beach Boys also came to hate those questions. Beach Boys albums continued, but the expectations of the public still typecast them as making music about sun, surf, sand, and hot rods. 

Cassettes of Smile pieces began to leak into the hands of Beach Boy fans in the late Seventies. Suddenly, fans had access to the parts of the body of Brian’s work comprising The Smile Era. Tapes began to be exchanged, and collectors and fans became part of a group of people who came to treasure the timeless and beautiful music modules known as “Smile.” It became apparent these tapes were the musical evidence of a man who had leapt off the edge of the rock world in 1966 and 1967, faithfully followed by his group, not knowing where their creative Muse would take them, or where they would go next. Several devoted Beach Boys followers and historians helped spread the word of the unique and utterly jaw dropping beauty of this music. Fans exchanged their own creatively sequenced assemblies of the modules with each other, and “Smile” became the most interactive album in music history. Nearly every Beach Boy/Brian Wilson music lover made a personal version of Smile to hear in their car or home stereos. No one ever believed that their version could top Brian’s. But everyone had to try. Imitation was the sincerest form of admiration.

SMILE’S REPUTATION GROWS

Musicians began to treasure the “Smile” tapes, and a new generation grew up listening to them and marveling at the scope of creativity that Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys had recorded in The Smile Sessions. Members of the group of people around Brian at the time of Smile became bearers of a legend with which they did not always care to be identified. When I was first asked to write this essay, I called an old friend.  I wondered what he thought about all of this.  I knew how much he loved the music. I also knew he had a sense of how much pain it had caused. So I wondered if he might want to help me out.  He declined saying simply, "There's nothing more that needs to be said about it. There's no need to write about it.  Forget everything---the legends, the psychodrama, the delays.  Forty-five years after Brian created the music of Smile, it's still the most beautiful, singular and original collection of compositions of the 20th Century.  The music speaks for itself."   There was always the music….the music from the “angels” as Brian put it. That music from a place so divine, so wonderful, that it became the real life incarnation of the music from The Magic Transistor Radio in Brian’s Mt. Vernon and Fairway Fairy Tale from 1972’s Holland album. 

Numerous attempts were undertaken to present legal issues of the Smile Era studio recordings. Books were written, and fans began passionate debate of what the “real Smile” would have sounded like. But from The Beach Boy and Brian Wilson world, there were only short comments or expressions from The Beach Boys that reflected their legitimate frustration that listeners were more focused on an album that never was, instead of an incomparable body of released music that is at the peak of American Music from the Rock Era. The fulcrum point of The Beach Boys career was always “Smile.” Beach Boys history was usually written as “pre-Smile” and “post-Smile.”

Musicians and fans were disappointed as attempts to get the sessions of Smile released were unsuccessful in 1972, 1988, 1996, and lovers of the music began to wonder if release would come in their lifetime. 1993’s Good Vibration’s Boxed Set contained the most extensive selection of Smile recordings, some 45 minutes of music. Long time fans and musicians such as Darian Sahanaja and Nick Walusko, and many others found inspiration in the Smile music. Bands such as Fleet Foxes, Wondermints, Super Furry Animals, Panda Bear, The Flaming Lips, Wilco, Yo La Tengo, and Stereolab are all from the generation of musicians who grew up with Smile on collector’s tapes and were reportedly influenced by its incredible breadth and diversity.

Darian Sahanaja later became the person who assisted Brian and Van Dyke Parks in their assembly of the Smile modules into what became Brian Wilson Presents Smile. Now seven years after the debut of Brian’s 2004 masterpiece, The Beach Boys have consented unanimously to allow the release of these incredible performances in this Boxed Set. 45 years after they were shelved, these stunning and at times unimaginably beautiful modular recordings collectively known as “Smile” are presented for your enjoyment. Thank you to all who kept the Smile faith, and may everyone who hears these performances be as moved as I was in 1966 when I first heard Good Vibrations on the radio. Only God knows what Smile in 1967 would have been. In 2004, Brian Wilson thankfully caught an updraft, and glided back into the upper reaches of songwriting, arranging, producing, and performing. The world will finally hear Brian and The Beach Boys as they soared into the Sun in The Smile Sessions. 


Peter Reum is a licensed counselor and a long time observer and lover of the music of Brian Wilson and  The Beach Boys living in Montana.