Beach Boys’ Lost Classic Draws Smiles

Intermission came at the Orpheum Theatre Oct. 14, and assorted generations of Brian Wilson fans piled into the tiny hallways.

The college students wore Mission of Burma t-shirts and sweaters screened with the cover to OK Computer, in some sort of indirect homage to Wilson. Not to be outdone, the baby boomers sported shirts with the original album cover to Smile—the covers that were printed by the thousands in 1967, but never packaged with a Smile LP and never sold.

Until September, no official Smile album had ever existed. Brian Wilson made more than fifty trips to the recording studio in 1966 and 1967, intending to record the follow-up to 1966’s Pet Sounds, but nothing came of it. The Beach Boys, with Wilson now an indifferent participant, moved on to other projects, and would be increasingly marginalized as has-beens in the decades to come.

That’s the history of Smile, possibly the most talked-about legend in pop music. The narrative proved hard to resist: Wilson, a musical genius, mysteriously imploding at the peak of his ability, leaving unfinished what might have been the answer to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Over the years, the incomplete Smile recording sessions became available as bootlegs; some of the songs found their way into later Beach Boys albums and compilations. Fans compiled song orders as they saw fit. Books speculated about the causes (drugs, depression, family strife) of Wilson’s unraveling. Smile was frequently called the greatest unreleased album in history—a judgment undoubtedly influenced by its rich back story.

The first indication that Smile was not to remain an asterisk in pop history came in 2003, when Wilson (now severed from the Beach Boys) announced his intent to reconstruct and play the album in concerts across Europe. The first of those, in London, attracted instant claims of “timelessness,” both for the concert and what was increasingly seen as a new ordering and orchestration of Smile itself.

The rest is already celebrated history: Wilson decides in 2004 to re-record the album from scratch with his backing band; Sept. 28 it is released and the predictable adulation streams from the press; Wilson announces more concerts across America and even hints at post-Smile work, including a possible collaboration with Paul McCartney.

It is not hard to understand why Wilson attracted a diverse crowd to the Orpheum. The concert did its best to bill itself as history in the making. Commemorative Smile programs were $20; circular Smile posters, at least $30; Smile shirts, hats, and sweaters as much as $70. The Smile logo was omnipresent, even appearing on a screen behind the band—as if the audience needed reminding of what was being played.

The performance of Smile itself (and other Beach Boys hits, including one from Pet Sounds) was more equivocal than the concert’s sloganeering: Brian Wilson is clearly a more constrained musician than he once was. Where the Smile album succeeded in cloaking Wilson’s vocal limitations behind other singers and an excellent production, the live show necessarily did not. He ran out of breath during “Surf’s Up.” He was flat during “Vegetables.” Often, he simply delegated lyrics to one of the two male backup vocalists (whose day job is in the band the Wondermints).

To people who believe the Smile mythology, these technical points must matter little. If the story is about a man who was haunted for a long time by this music, then Wilson’s frailty is evidence of how hard he has struggled.

Wilson is frail in other ways that the album was able to conceal completely. At the Orpheum he was stage furniture, installed on his stool at the beginning and rarely standing up. When he did move about, he staggered. He played his keyboard mostly at will; often he waved his hands in the air, keeping no better time than the more enthusiastic members of his audience. The backing band, which at times boasted a string section of five and a brass section of three, had a professional conductor of its own.

But to dismiss the Smile live show on account of its broken protagonist is a simple reaction against the mythology. It is unlikely that any version of Wilson’s work—bootleg, official recording or live performance—will be evaluated separate from its surrounding narratives. Indeed, the Brian Wilson legend is at least as responsible as his music for maintaining his and the Beach Boys’ permanent respectability at the frontiers of pop music—frontiers of which Wilson himself has no knowledge.

It is unclear how Smile will come to be regarded with respect to the Beach Boys’ Sgt. Pepper, Pet Sounds, or even with what it could have been had Wilson finished it in 1967. One potential conclusion is that no completed album could redeem the mystique of the Smile bootlegs.

But while waiting in line for Smile merchandise during intermission, the response from concertgoers was immediate and enthusiastic. Someone whispered “teenage symphony to God”—once Wilson’s promise of what Smile would be—and someone else nodded back. The first person came to the front of the line, pointed to a poster of the young Wilson, and opened his wallet.

The next generation of Smile’s myth is now hanging in a bedroom somewhere.