Then there’s Brian Wilson, another unorthodox Gemini who’s seen the dark side of the moon more than once, yet still shambles around the edges of pop mythology, a perennial Beach Boy, a legendary nutcase.
Flash to Wilson singing along with Paul Schaffer’s band on Letterman a few years back: he seems lost in space, unable or unwilling to turn away from his keyboard to make small talk with Dave. You felt bad that someone of such obvious mental fragility should be compelled to appear before TV audiences.
But Wilson was also busy making a behind-the-scenes comeback. The last few years were spent on a top-secret project: resurrecting (and finally completing) his legendary unreleased 1967 album, Smile. Why, after 37 years, finish an album that Beach Boy wunderkind Wilson had abandoned as a failure? Who knows?
In any case, this year Wilson assembled a batch of new musicians, including a classical ensemble called the Stockholm Strings ‘N’ Horns, to return to his original arrangements from those aborted California sessions. No original tapes were used; instead, a painstaking attempt was made to recreate the sound of the original with identical instruments and arrangements, even the same recording studios where Wilson labored before having his fabled mental breakdown back in 1967.
A little background: Wilson had created a bona fide pop masterpiece in early 1966 called Pet Sounds that threw down the gauntlet, musically, to the Beatles, who responded that same year with their own classic, Revolver. The music press had begun to speak in more respectful terms of pop songs, particularly the classically inspired work of McCartney, Lennon and Wilson. True, "Eleanor Rigby" used a string section and both the pioneering Beatles were playing around with tape loops and atonal musical forms. But Wilson, alone in his California mansion, went further out on the limb with every recording attempt. He reportedly installed a sandbox in his recording studio for creative inspiration. "Good Vibrations" (from 1966) was one of the most complex pop songs yet, scored with Theremin and a chugging cello. Eventually, this self-created pressure got the best of the guy, who was not the most stable of characters to begin with.
In short, he folded, collapsing in the middle of recording a complex song cycle with lyricist Van Dyke Parks that was to be titled Smile (or, as Wilson liked to call it, "a teenage symphony to God").
Some fragments survived, such as the main tunes preserved on 1967’s Smiley Smile album. But older versions of "Heroes and Villains," "Veg-Tables," "Wind Chimes" and "Wonderful" are just that: fragments, bits of a larger picture, glimpses of something magical, yet somehow not quite in focus. The new Cd recording brings it all to glorious light.
It’s great that Wilson saw this project through, however delayed. Smile is indeed impressive, a song cycle presenting a series of themes that may not make a lot of logical sense, but please the ear all the same. Sadly, the legendary songwriter no longer possesses the vocal chops he once did in 1966 (there’s a bit of denture mouth in his slurry vocals.) Thankfully though, Wilson, who is deaf in one ear, allowed recording to proceed in stereo, rather than his preferred mono. This allows the dynamic propulsion of Smile to burst forth from the speakers, lifting you up and along on its loopy mission.
Opening with an intricate a cappella section that sounds almost Bach-like before giving way to "Heroes and Villains," Smile is presented in three sections. Actually, each song is rife with sub-sections, little musical interludes that slow down, speed up and change direction, venturing into humor and reflection. Separate vocal tendrils wrap themselves around "Wind Chimes," lifting the song from its original demo quality on Smiley Smile, while cacophony surfaces during "Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow." Way too experimental for the Beach Boys, of course.
What results is unbelievably complex pop music, whether written in 1966 or now. Influenced by transcendental meditation, Wilson incorporated the rhythms of breathing into these pieces: they lilt and flow, rise and fall like the waves, and while there’s no huge climactic peak (as in the Beatles’ final chord from "A Day in the Life" off Sgt. Pepper), there are sublimely beautiful moments.
Tracks like "Cabin Essence" and "Surf’s Up" transcend pop music, then and now. As Wilson once told a reporter, the only way to define this music is to try and hum it. You can’t: it’s too multi-layered, too eccentric and harmonically rich for a simple hum-along. Shades of Burt Bacharach (banjos and other elements of Americana) and Ennio Morricone pop up, while today’s alternative bands such as the High Llamas have made a cottage industry out of imitating Wilson’s strange musical universe. It’s best to listen to Smile as one 47-minute piece, one that conveniently wraps up with "Good Vibrations," that joyous ode to girl-grooving at the beach.
Will history now be kind to Wilson’s magnum opus? Does it stand up as well as, say, Sgt. Pepper, which sold 50 gazillion copies back in 1967? In many ways, Smile is far more advanced than Sgt. Pepper, more ambitious, more complex and problematic in its structure. It may lack the immediacy of that "Summer of Love" relic, but it’s classical pop of a very high order. So go ahead and Smile.