|
Section One
Section Two
Section Three
 The
melodies arc, soar and ache throughout, no matter what tempo paces them;
and by the time we hear “God Only Knows,” we break heart with the
composer, knowing that life deeply felt is life lived in all its majestic
highs and eventual lows. Brother Carl’s breathtaking, clear-headed vocal
reveals the divinity of talent possessed by the Wilson brothers.
The songs are about wishing, hoping, knowing, believing, answering,
waiting, and being present. Tony Asher’s words invite us to move beyond
adolescence, from bliss and ignorance to knowledge and certainty. But his
narrative also acts as a trip-wire for our suspicions about the perils of
growing up. The lyrics place us in some middle Earth of self-discovery:
Maybe if we wish and hope and pray it might come true…
I try hard to be strong, but sometimes I fail myself…
I’m a little bit scared ‘cause I haven’t been home in a long time…
Let’s not think about tomorrow…
I’m waiting for the day when you can love again…
The world could show nothing to me…
I know there’s an answer, but I have to find it by myself…
Love is here today and tomorrow it’s gone…∆
I guess I just wasn’t made for these times…
It’s so sad to watch a sweet thing die…
(All lines from
Pet Sounds by Brian Wilson & Tony Asher, ∆ lyrics by Mike Love)
When “Caroline
No” fades and we hear Wilson’s own dogs barking at the decaying sounds of
a departing train, we are utterly alone, and the only constant in our
lives are the thoughts we use to trespass upon the sweet melancholy that
gives substance to our doubts, but also to our revelations and knowledge
of where we’ve been and where we are going. Asher, Wilson and the Beach
Boys do nothing less than reveal the possibilities of pop music.
Musically, Pet Sounds is the work of a young man unburdened by the
very nature of the song cycle. The real emotional truth of this music
moves from words to the music itself. In the realm of the studio, Brian is
peerless here, as he breaks the long narrative history of pop music
formula, reassembles its fragments into a kaleidoscope of sound that
genuflects to celestial melodies and arrangements that have entirely shed
the constraints of surf combo, frat boy harmony, and Chuck Berry
outerwear. Writer Timothy White says that Pet Sounds reveals
“Brian’s unconscious trust in the loving power of music…; [his] unswayable
belief in the enduring power of one’s better self.” Pet Sounds was
Brian Wilson’s belief in absolution as well as his grasp of what was
beyond him. Until Smile…
“Smile, never completed, never released, has become the most
enigmatic project in Rock history. What it was, what it could have been,
is left to legend and speculation. What it did become was an everlasting
musical albatross for Brian Wilson as well as for the Beach Boys’ career.
In Smile, Brian was creating his own American gospel from a Southern
Californian point of view. When his dream was shattered, so was his
artistic raison, d’etre, and he embarked on a retreat into battle with his
own personal demons that has lasted to this day”
(David Leaf,
1977)
____________________________________
When Brian Wilson dies…
California will fall into the sea—
Thunder-pipeline-wormhole-
Surf’s up for you and me.*
________________________
A choke of grief, hard-heartened I;
Beyond belief, a broken man too tough to cry.
(“Surf’s Up” by
Brian Wilson & Van Dyke Parks)
So now Smile has been released on Nonesuch records—imaginary music
on an imaginary label. Perfect. For Beach Boys fans this has been an
interminable wait; for others it has hardly mattered. Pop music has eaten
itself a thousand times over. The myth is too large to tell here (but do
see Dominic Priore’s “Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile!” for the
brilliantly collected galactic account). For the uninitiated, here are
some essential Smilisms:
 Smile
was Brian Wilson’s musical elixir—“the idea of making music that could
make people feel better…”
(Carl Wilson).
“Smile
music is the aural equivalent to Walt Disney’s Fantasia
(Domenic Priore).
Van
Dyke Parks, one of Southern California’s great artists in his own right,
was brought in by Brian to write the lyrics that would eventually evolve
into an often abstract, but endlessly fascinating narrative triptych of
American humor and history, using abundant allusions to the gothic
underpinnings of the lost, forgotten, found and remembered. His work was
poetically unapologetic, and yet, it would be a warm-hearted reflection of
American sentiment in the same way that the refined music of the Beatles
and Ray Davies (Kinks) was a loving meditation on what was distinctly
British about England.
The
musical palette of Smile was writ early by the example of “Good
Vibrations,” and would largely build upon the experimentation refined in
Pet Sounds.
The
songs of Smile were often simple and sublime, deeply intuitive and
hilarious, confounding and contagiously eccentric—some were simply
heartbreaking.
 A
prolonged, unchecked period of unfocused artistic excess, drug abuse,
superstition, and the clashing of egos saturated the production and
sabotaged the process which was required to make concrete the inspiration
and complete the masterwork.
Key
Beach Boys rejected Smile, as did figures at Capital Records,
calling Parks’ lyrics “unfathomable” and Wilson’s music fatally
uncommercial.
Smile
was shelved, Van Dyke Parks went home, and Brian went to bed for three
years—defeated, dejected, and betrayed by many of the people he
unselfishly made very wealthy.
The
Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper was released to unprecedented popular and
critical acclaim while Brian Wilson disappeared into himself. The
ghost-monkey on his back that was Smile scratched at Brian and
haunted the Beach Boys and eventually destroyed the group and nearly
killed Brian.
Brian
would wake up long enough to participate in three flawed, comparatively
minor, and criminally neglected gems (Smiley Smile, Wild Honey,
and Friends); two superior efforts (20/20 and Sunflower),
and one fragmented group effort, containing one track from Smile—a
finished, quite majestic LP title piece, “Surf’s Up,” and a short
song-of-songs, written as an epitaph and penned entirely by Wilson,
entitled, “’Til I Die.” Gorgeous, but sad beyond definition, this is
Brian’s summary of his life, wrought through an ironic return to pure
metaphor, and possibly and impossibly his greatest song:
I’m a cork on the ocean
Rolling over a raging sea—
How deep is the ocean?
How deep is the ocean?
I lost my way—hey, hey, hey.
Smile is the most bootlegged record of all time, though few
versions are credibly intact or effectively arranged in the proper
sequencing. Quite a bit of Smile has been released in various and
often bizarre incarnations on post-Smile recordings—including a large
bewildering, but fascinating chunk on the Beach Boys Good Vibrations
boxed set. With Brian Wilson’s prolonged good health, the wildly
successful tour of Pet Sounds with the Wondermints, and his
personal belief in Smile restored, Wilson brought back Van Dyke
Parks to help him finish the missing transitions for the long-form Western
‘operetta’, “Heroes and Villains,” and to complete the many fragments that
left the original Smile questionably scant. Smile toured
with enormous success in England last spring, and it is making its way
through America as I write this.
Sadly, the Beach Boys’ Smile will remain in the vaults (unless
Wilson is not revealing the fullness of his cherubic grin). This Smile
is newly recorded from top to bottom, properly sequenced, lovingly
Wonderminted, and, according to my ears, beautifully accomplished—even
with the faded beauty of Brian’s now autumnal voice. It’s no matter. Brian
still stands.
He is the ravaged son of an abusive father. He has buried his mom, Audrey,
and his two Beach Boy brothers—Dennis, who was Brian’s surf and motor muse
and the original inspiration for Dumb Angel, Smile’s working
title; and Carl, the purist vocal extension of Brian’s music and the
peacemaker in an otherwise long family feud. Both brothers delighted in
Brian’s Smile, yet his cousin, Mike Love, will forever be blamed as
blind to its possibilities. Brian was a mentor to the Beach Boys David
Marks, Al Jardine and Bruce Johnson; to journeymen contributors Glen
Campbell, Billy Hinche, The Flame and Daryl Dragon; and is still held in
awe by such classic pop stalwarts as Eric Clapton, Keith Richard, Elvis
Costello, Dave Edmunds, Paul McCartney and Andy Partridge. We call him
Brian, Mr. Wilson, and genius. All that he ever cared about was the work
it took to practice the love of making epochal music.
The workbook that was the Beach Boys’ Smile can now be put away.
With the new Smile, Wilson emerges with a different kind of
masterpiece, giving us a timeless, complete and loving view of America.
Brian shook the ghost monkey off on his own terms, and there’s justice all
around. Van Dyke Parks’ lyrics deserve a full listening. What Mike Love
and the folks at Capital Records could not understand in this poetry has
more to do with Love’s lack of education and Capital’s regrettable lack of
faith in an artist whose own faith in the power of music shames those who
live for the bottom line. It’s a good thing Brian Wilson is all about
love, mercy and forgiveness, because the kind of censorship imposed by
stupidity and greed is hard to reconcile with any grace.
Yet, it is the abundance of grace that is at the very heart of Smile.
It is Van Dyke Parks’ romantic vision of America, his Wordsworthian
evocation of humility, and his love of words themselves, used in contexts
and combinations in pursuit of external and internal discovery, that
conjures us to wonder: Farther down the path was a mystery / Through
the recess, the chalk and numbers / A boy bumped into her… / Wonderful
(from Smile).
If Smile proves anything beyond its narrative ingenuity, it is that
Brian Wilson represents authentic progression in popular music. Honoring
his past, his muses, his collaborators, and the iron horse of his own work
ethic, he has shaped in Smile a truly original vision of music we
can all enjoy. He was always more than a clearinghouse of ideas, sound and
vision. He now humbles himself by acknowledging a past made present. What
was once sent has now returned.
Section One
Section Two
Section Three
Edward
Morneau is a freelance writer who currently teaches film and literature
and composes music for the Flying Fan Modules and Million Headed Child.
His poem, *“When Brian Wilson…” is © 2000 by Heartstrings Music.
This article is © 2004 by the author and is used here by permission. All
Rights Reserved. Contact the author at
emorneau@bostonbeats.com.
To learn more, visit the website at
http://www.brianwilson.com/
|
