Through the decades, the legend of Smile, the unreleased follow-up to Pet Sounds, has grown into something larger than its creator. One thing that can’t be expressed is the context of the time, so we won’t do that. But suffice it to say that once upon a time, it wasn’t as easy as it is today to hear recordings that haven’t been officially sanctioned by a distribution channel, so for the longest time, fanatics had to rely on rumor and secondhand accounts. Basically, several months of recording a seemingly bottomless pool of ideas had no unforeseeable end, so in order to stay commercially viable, the rest of the Beach Boys corralled Brian Wilson long enough to get him to complete something, anything that could be their next album. (Meanwhile, Capitol had already put out two greatest hits albums, each totaling less than half an hour, to make up for the time since, as well as for the low sales of Pet Sounds.)
The band never pretended that Smiley Smile was a worthy replacement for Smile, which is good, because it’s not. While each of the songs—save one, but we’re getting to that—had their roots in that project, the released album consisted nearly entirely of new recordings, with no outside musicians involved, captured at Brian’s home studio.
The album begins with “Heroes And Villains”, the big production number that was always going to be the next single. An extremely complicated song, it was much too adventurous for Top 40 radio. “Vegetables”, about the joy of eating them, has minimal accompaniment other than a quietly pulsing bass pedal and “crunching” percussion that doesn’t include Paul McCartney, no matter what anyone says. The instrumental “Fall Breaks And Back To Winter”—subtitled “W. Woodpecker Symphony” for the familiar cartoon theme played at the end of each phrase—seems out of place in the middle of the side, until you hear the two truly odd tracks that come after. “She’s Goin’ Bald” is an attempt at comedy, with wacky sped-up voice effects, while “Little Pad” seems to be an attempt to demonstrate how cool they were by getting high and releasing the results.
The label insisted on including “Good Vibrations”, the big hit single from the summer before, and it’s possible that it may have actually helped sales, but its inclusion here still underscores how far away the Beach Boys had traveled from fun and sun, before and since. “With Me Tonight” is a pleasant yet unfinished idea, showing off the harmonies, pretty as ever. “Wind Chimes” and “Wonderful” were both Smile songs, but appear here in eerie, stoned renditions, stripped of all innocence and wonder. In the middle is “Gettin’ Hungry”, a collaboration with Mike Love, who was still happy singing songs about the beach. The chorus should have been reserved for a better song than the one with these verses. “Whistle In” is yet another unfinished chant that sounds like the other ones on the album.
There’s definitely something missing from Smiley Smile. Mostly it’s a real drumkit, which is hardly heard anywhere except for mildly tapped percussion. And while it was recorded in Brian’s home studio—hardly a shoestring operation—it sounds more like it was recorded in a closet, with everyone singing and playing quietly so as not to disturb any babies napping upstairs. It all combined for an album that was incredibly hard to like, but you kept trying anyway.
The 1990 reissue campaign paired the album with Wild Honey from later the same year, with liner notes that hinted more tantalizingly at what could have been. With room to spare alongside two short albums, the bonus tracks included alternate takes of “Good Vibrations” and “Heroes And Villains”, along with another seven minutes of “Good Vibrations” session excerpts that would eventually turn up on the Pet Sounds Sessions box and the pretty B-side chant “You’re Welcome”. Some nice moments to be sure, but they only fueled the myth. And myths are often better than reality. (Fifty years after the album was released, 18 minutes of session extract were included in the Sunshine Tomorrow compilation, and another 20 were in its digital-only companion.)
The Beach Boys Smiley Smile (1967)—2½
1990 CD reissue: same as 1967, plus Wild Honey album and 6 extra tracks
I disagree that Smiley Smile is hard to like. It has real lo-fi charm, and has influenced plenty of bands. It can be a stoner album, but the songs are not eerie, just weird and funny. It's also an insight into the making of Smile, although it should be enjoyed on its own merits. The BB's were so talented that even their toss-off's were still good.
ReplyDeleteMark
After digesting “Endless Summer”, “Spirit of America”, and Brother/Reprise’s “Good Vibrations: Best of The Beach Boys” (which contained 12 post-“Party!” singles), I decided it was time to go further. Desperately trying to cash in on “Endless Summer”, B/R released the four post-“Party” in two rather shoddily packaged “two-fers” (although the liner notes were good). So, my very first Beach Boys album purchase was – on cassette – the one that contained “Friends” and this album.
ReplyDeleteI wasn’t quite prepared for what I found. You say that that “something missing”. What’s missing are songs! Tracks are fragments (“Whistle In”, “Fall Breaks..”, “Little Pad”) or a couple of fragments stitched together (“With Me Tonight”, “Gettin’ Hungry”).
The term “insular” has turned into a cliché, but that perfectly describes how it sounds. A lot of the tracks are minor key dirges (the bastardized “Wonderful”, “With Me Tonight”, “Fall Breaks..”) that sound very creepy. The group’s harmonies are there, but they put more breath into them, which enhances the weirdness.
The band also wants to convince you that they’re having fun. However, “She’s Goin’ Bald”, the laughter on “Little Pad” and on the bridge of “Wonderful” (under which is yet another restatement of the “Heroes and Villains” theme) sound like you’re at Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether’s instead.
Despite the group production credit, Brian was still in charge of the band’s musical direction (and would be over the next year or so). While, I guess, he found the album soothing, it says something else to me. In Mike’s autobiography, he quotes engineer Alan Boyd on “Smile”, saying that he thought the music “came from a dark place”. I don’t know about “Smile”, but I positively think that is true of “Smiley Smile”. Nothing illustrates this more than the remake of “Wind Chimes”. I like it because it makes the innocent practice listening to wind chimes sound, as the liner notes put it, malevolent.
In the end, the balance of the album sounds like Brian is on the verge of a psychotic break. The first but not the last time that would happen. Of course, you were able to boost the rating at least a half point because of the classic singles “Good Vibrations” and “Heroes and Villains”, even though this mix of the latter needed more edge to become a big hit.
Even so, Capitol’s marketing bungled again. They should have released the album simultaneously with it instead of waiting two months. Or released it with the follow up single, and NOT credit it to Brian and Mike alone (they even put Carl’s picture on the sleeve by mistake). Then they released another mangled “Best of..” (“Long Tall Texan”?) while letting the band go to Hawaii to record a live album. So, when it finally came out in September, there was no commercial momentum left.
So, in the end, they blew it by releasing a weak, silly album at a critical artistic juncture. Things were never the same after that . The stuff from the sessions that’s on “Sunshine Tomorrow” is interesting. The details of the backing tracks show that there was some attention to experimental detail, but there was no time to develop it. Most people only need “Good Vibrations”, “Heroes and Villains” in their collections. All others, be wary.
Those two-fers were certainly a good idea at the time, but I wonder why they decided "Friends" should be record one and not record two. I'll have to look out for those liner notes, since I have yet to see them reproduced anywhere.
DeleteVisiting a record store in Albany in 1985. I was astonished when I came across both an original Brother vinyl of “Smiley Smile” and a bootleg of “Smile”. The latter was only the second ever to be released. As you might imagine, at that time it was mind-boggling to hear stuff like “Do You Like Worms?”, “Mrs. O'Leary's Cow” and, especially, the original version of “Wonderful”.
ReplyDeleteTwo tracks that were on that bootleg were bonus tracks on the “two-fer”. One was this early version of “Good Vibrations”. The lyrics on this version were written by Tony Asher. Brian revived them in 2004. Why, when Mike’s were better? The other was “Can’t Wait Too Long”, although the two-fer version chops out a section where Carl or Brian recites lyrics over the track.
It is believed that the bootleg source was a tape that the band gave their official biographer of tracks from “Smile”. “Can’t Wait Too Long” was on that tape and was described in that biography as intended for “Smile”. I was really surprised to read in the liner notes of the “two-fer” that it was recorded during the sessions for “Wild Honey”. It sounds NOTHING like it – indeed, it sounds more like “Smile”. One has to wonder what Brian had in mind, but as with “Smile”, he ran out of energy to follow it to a logical conclusion.