lcjjdnh
02-24-2004, 05:19 PM
Came across this article the other day the other day and thought it was interesting. As a huge fan of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds I really hope they release a studio version of Smile someday but for now, this may have to suffice
http://www.timesstar.com/Stories/0,1413,125~1549~1970611,00.html
Beach Boy Brian Wilson is finally showing off his 'Smile'
By Randy Lewis
Los Angeles Times
Saturday, February 21, 2004 - LOS ANGELES
<RR>THERE'S no surf, no sand, no little deuce coupes and only a couple of California girls in sight of the Los Angeles 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 staring 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 ultra-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 spent 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."
Friday night, he unveiled "Smile" at a concert in England, where fans have long accorded him the heroic status Americans reserved for the Beatles. It was at one of six sold-out shows scheduled at London's Royal Festival Hall.
During the next three weeks, Wilson will give 16 "Smile" concerts in Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and France. He plans a U.S. tour in the fall to coincide with the compact-disc 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.
Wilson, his once golden 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.
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 the most popular American band 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 vowed 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 slated for "Smile." It became the Beach Boys' biggest hit, 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 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.
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.
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.
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." Wilson had been bested by his rivals, and he scrapped "Smile." The band later came out with a watered-down compromise called "Smiley Smile," a faint echo of Wilson's original vision.
The fate of "Smile" has become legend. While most of the world never heard the album, several influential musicians and journalists were allowed into some recording sessions in late 1966 and early 1967.
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.
"Until about three years ago, you couldn't even mention 'Heroes and Villains' (another key song from 'Smile') to Brian," says Wilson biographer David Leaf, who is shooting a film documentary about the completion of "Smile."
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 to craft a few new lyrics and musical links.
Wilson says he was able to revisit perhaps the darkest chapter of his past because "I have emotional security."
He gets it from his second wife, Melinda (to whom he has been married for nine years), the three children they've adopted, a team of doctors from the University of California, Los Angeles 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.
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.
And apparently the reviews have been glowing so far
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=v1>Posted on Sun, Feb. 22, 2004</TD></TR><TR><TD colSpan=2><TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=250 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=3 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=adlabel align=left><SCRIPT language=JavaScript1.1>_krdDartInc++;document.write('<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=\\"JavaScript1.1\\" SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/mercurynews.entertainment/entertainment;kw=center6;c2=entertainment_homepage;pos=center6;group=rectangle;tile='+_krdDartInc+';ord='+_krdDartOrd+'?"><\/SCRIPT>');</SCRIPT><SCRIPT language=JavaScript1.1 src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/mercurynews.entertainment/entertainment;kw=center6;c2=entertainment_homepage;pos=center6;group=rectangle;tile=2;ord=1077664736593?"></SCRIPT><IFRAME name=google_ads_frame marginWidth=0 marginHeight=0 src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/ads?client=ca-knightridder_336x280&random=1077664737109&hl=en&adsafe=high&format=336x280_sln2&output=html&url=http%3A//www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/8010272.htm" frameBorder=0 width=336 scrolling=no height=280 allowTransparency></IFRAME><NOSCRIPT>http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/mercurynews.entertainment/entertainment;kw=center6;c2=entertainment_homepage;pos=center6;group=rectangle;ord=1077664738904? (http://<a href=)</NOSCRIPT></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>http://www.mercurynews.com/images/common/spacer.gif
Lost Beach Boys album premieres in U.K.
http://www.mercurynews.com/images/common/spacer.gif
JILL LAWLESS
http://www.mercurynews.com/images/common/spacer.gif
Associated Press
http://www.mercurynews.com/images/common/spacer.gif
<!-- begin body-content -->LONDON - In 1967, Beach Boys songwriter Brian Wilson shelved "Smile," an ambitious concept album intended as the group's masterpiece. Thirty-seven years later, "Smile" received its live premiere in London - and most critics agreed it was worth the wait.
Wilson, 61 and performing again after years as a near recluse, received a five-minute standing ovation at the end of Friday's show at London's Royal Festival Hall. A black-clad Wilson led an 18-piece band in performances of several Beach Boys hits, followed by the complete "Smile" - concluding with its best-known track, the pop classic "Good Vibrations."
Fans were rapturous. The Guardian newspaper hailed the work's "groundbreaking complexity and sophistication," while The Daily Telegraph called it "a glorious, tangled symphony of celebration and sadness."
"Smile" was intended as a follow-up to The Beach Boys' groundbreaking 1966 album "Pet Sounds," and its lush orchestration took advantage of advances in recording technology.
The perfectionist Wilson worked for months to build the album's multilayered sound, but shelved it shortly before its scheduled release, explaining that the songs were "not commercial."
Over the years, "Smile" gained a reputation among fans as the band's lost masterpiece.
It may not deserve that status, Times of London critic Stephen Dalton wrote Saturday, but he nonetheless hailed "the grace and wisdom" Wilson displayed.
"Smile," he said, was "a 40-minute crazy-paving collage of song fragments and Looney Tunes jingles, all bookended by the lush glory of 'Heroes and Villains' and the rapturous warble of 'Good Vibrations' ... It was clearly adventurous for its era but it is not difficult to see why Wilson's label and fellow Beach Boys balked at releasing it."
Wilson is due to play five more London concerts this week, followed by several dates around Britain and continental Europe. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Not sure whether anyone is really interested in this but I thought some folks might be.
http://www.timesstar.com/Stories/0,1413,125~1549~1970611,00.html
Beach Boy Brian Wilson is finally showing off his 'Smile'
By Randy Lewis
Los Angeles Times
Saturday, February 21, 2004 - LOS ANGELES
<RR>THERE'S no surf, no sand, no little deuce coupes and only a couple of California girls in sight of the Los Angeles 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 staring 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 ultra-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 spent 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."
Friday night, he unveiled "Smile" at a concert in England, where fans have long accorded him the heroic status Americans reserved for the Beatles. It was at one of six sold-out shows scheduled at London's Royal Festival Hall.
During the next three weeks, Wilson will give 16 "Smile" concerts in Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and France. He plans a U.S. tour in the fall to coincide with the compact-disc 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.
Wilson, his once golden 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.
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 the most popular American band 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 vowed 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 slated for "Smile." It became the Beach Boys' biggest hit, 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 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.
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.
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.
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." Wilson had been bested by his rivals, and he scrapped "Smile." The band later came out with a watered-down compromise called "Smiley Smile," a faint echo of Wilson's original vision.
The fate of "Smile" has become legend. While most of the world never heard the album, several influential musicians and journalists were allowed into some recording sessions in late 1966 and early 1967.
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.
"Until about three years ago, you couldn't even mention 'Heroes and Villains' (another key song from 'Smile') to Brian," says Wilson biographer David Leaf, who is shooting a film documentary about the completion of "Smile."
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 to craft a few new lyrics and musical links.
Wilson says he was able to revisit perhaps the darkest chapter of his past because "I have emotional security."
He gets it from his second wife, Melinda (to whom he has been married for nine years), the three children they've adopted, a team of doctors from the University of California, Los Angeles 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.
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.
And apparently the reviews have been glowing so far
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=v1>Posted on Sun, Feb. 22, 2004</TD></TR><TR><TD colSpan=2><TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=0 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=250 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=3 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=adlabel align=left><SCRIPT language=JavaScript1.1>_krdDartInc++;document.write('<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=\\"JavaScript1.1\\" SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/mercurynews.entertainment/entertainment;kw=center6;c2=entertainment_homepage;pos=center6;group=rectangle;tile='+_krdDartInc+';ord='+_krdDartOrd+'?"><\/SCRIPT>');</SCRIPT><SCRIPT language=JavaScript1.1 src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/mercurynews.entertainment/entertainment;kw=center6;c2=entertainment_homepage;pos=center6;group=rectangle;tile=2;ord=1077664736593?"></SCRIPT><IFRAME name=google_ads_frame marginWidth=0 marginHeight=0 src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/ads?client=ca-knightridder_336x280&random=1077664737109&hl=en&adsafe=high&format=336x280_sln2&output=html&url=http%3A//www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/8010272.htm" frameBorder=0 width=336 scrolling=no height=280 allowTransparency></IFRAME><NOSCRIPT>http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/mercurynews.entertainment/entertainment;kw=center6;c2=entertainment_homepage;pos=center6;group=rectangle;ord=1077664738904? (http://<a href=)</NOSCRIPT></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>http://www.mercurynews.com/images/common/spacer.gif
Lost Beach Boys album premieres in U.K.
http://www.mercurynews.com/images/common/spacer.gif
JILL LAWLESS
http://www.mercurynews.com/images/common/spacer.gif
Associated Press
http://www.mercurynews.com/images/common/spacer.gif
<!-- begin body-content -->LONDON - In 1967, Beach Boys songwriter Brian Wilson shelved "Smile," an ambitious concept album intended as the group's masterpiece. Thirty-seven years later, "Smile" received its live premiere in London - and most critics agreed it was worth the wait.
Wilson, 61 and performing again after years as a near recluse, received a five-minute standing ovation at the end of Friday's show at London's Royal Festival Hall. A black-clad Wilson led an 18-piece band in performances of several Beach Boys hits, followed by the complete "Smile" - concluding with its best-known track, the pop classic "Good Vibrations."
Fans were rapturous. The Guardian newspaper hailed the work's "groundbreaking complexity and sophistication," while The Daily Telegraph called it "a glorious, tangled symphony of celebration and sadness."
"Smile" was intended as a follow-up to The Beach Boys' groundbreaking 1966 album "Pet Sounds," and its lush orchestration took advantage of advances in recording technology.
The perfectionist Wilson worked for months to build the album's multilayered sound, but shelved it shortly before its scheduled release, explaining that the songs were "not commercial."
Over the years, "Smile" gained a reputation among fans as the band's lost masterpiece.
It may not deserve that status, Times of London critic Stephen Dalton wrote Saturday, but he nonetheless hailed "the grace and wisdom" Wilson displayed.
"Smile," he said, was "a 40-minute crazy-paving collage of song fragments and Looney Tunes jingles, all bookended by the lush glory of 'Heroes and Villains' and the rapturous warble of 'Good Vibrations' ... It was clearly adventurous for its era but it is not difficult to see why Wilson's label and fellow Beach Boys balked at releasing it."
Wilson is due to play five more London concerts this week, followed by several dates around Britain and continental Europe. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Not sure whether anyone is really interested in this but I thought some folks might be.