Brian Wilson's Smile

Smile, Brian Wilson's ill-starred attempt at the ultimate pop album, is the most famous album that was never made. Murray Wilson was Brian's legendarily abusive father; he managed the Beach Boys early in their recording career, but was eventually fired.

In late 1966, fueled by the Zeitgeist, psychedelics, hubris and hashish, Brian set out to create his ultimate "teenage symphony to God." Earlier in 1966 he had almost singlehandedly created the acclaimed Pet Sounds, and had followed up that masterpiece with the gorgeous single, Good Vibrations. (Paul McCartney has called Pet Sounds "the classic of this century.")

Unfortunately, as various personal and professional pressures mounted, Brian became destabilized. Smile had become unweildy in its scope, and the other Beach Boys thought it was too weird and feared they might lose their following (and their income). In May 1967, when Brian heard the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, he became completely dispirited (there was intense competition intermixed with the mutual admiration between the two groups) and ultimately scrapped the project.

In the last few years quite a number of tracks from the album have been officially released, revealing Smile, even in the rough, to be a splendid and highly imaginative "intertextual" tour of pop music's diverse landscape. Like Gravity's Rainbow Smile runs the gamut from high art to total silliness, reflecting the kindred sensibilities of Wilson and Pynchon.

In 2004, a healthier and happier Brian Wilson finally completed Smile, releasing the album on Nonesuch Records and, with his amazing young band, touring the world performing the entire work as a 3-movement suite (I saw them at Davies Hall in San Francisco — it was stunning!). Brian continues to write and record music of extraordinary beauty and refinement.

Check out "Goodbye Surfing, Hello God", a 1967 article Jules Siegel wrote for Cheetah magazine.

Also click here to read about Pynchon and Wilson in a tent (!).