Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece

By Domenic Priore, Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks

Smile has become one of the most unavoidable legends of rock'n'roll folklore, and in this searching examination Domenic Priore presents the true story behind the album's 40-year conception.

Work on Smile began hot on the heels of the ground-breaking Pet Sounds, when Brian Wilson collaborated with Van Dyke Parks to create a 'musical story of America'. However, production would famously collapse under a tide of internal fighting, record business chicanery and Brian's own health problems.

In this unique account, Domenic Priore interviews all the main players and documents every aspect of the Smile experience, from its troubled inception to Wilson's brave attempt to finish what he started in 2005. The book includes detailed accounts of studio work, the triumphant live shows in Europe and the US, and a host of exclusive photos from photographer Guy Webster.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Omnibus Press
• Release date: Mar 7, 2005
• ISBN: 9781783231980

Book preview

2005

Part 1

1 From Garage To Gold Star

Brian Wilson’s Sound Design

‘Looking at the technology of sound, from 3-track to 16-track, clearly is absolutely phenomenal, and that’s what Brian represents to me. Listening to his music, from Pet Sounds through Smile, is like showing what a tremendous torque there was, what an extreme acceleration in the technology available to people in recording.’

– Van Dyke Parks, 2004

The Beach Boys started out as a garage band, rehearsing in the carport of Gil Lindner’s house, around the corner from the Wilson brothers’ childhood home in Hawthorne. Brian, Dennis and Carl had a pretty uptight dad, but this neighbour friend allowed the boys a refuge so that their music could develop. Lindner owned a television shop on Hawthorne Boulevard where both the Wilsons and fellow home-town rocker Chris Montez would come in to hang out. Mr Lindner would bring gear in from the store to his garage so that the formative Beach Boys could record their rehearsals. In return, Brian, Dennis and Carl dug an amoeba-shaped pool for Gil in his back yard, outfitting it with nautical accoutrements and coloured flood lamps. ‘There were still small towns, and Hawthorne was connected to Los Angeles,’ said Van Dyke Parks. ‘Today, it’s one big city, and it wasn’t in those days. It was a different place. Gil Lindner was a gyro, gear-loose kind of a fella … There were a lot of vacuum tubes and, to me, it was just a strange place for it all to start. It was obvious they were doing a lot with a little. Just to have the initiative to record was an obvious reaction to the fact that the group was really exciting and stimulating.’

The Wilsons were no different to millions of teenagers around the United States, Europe and across the globe during the late ‘50s, inspired by Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and a plethora of rhythm-and-blues vocal-group records that were pure magic. The glowing harmonies of 45s such as The Flamingos’ ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ and the out-and-out joy of discs like The Crows’ 1953 nugget ‘Gee’ were essential inspirations to many.

The crucial difference for Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys was their positioning on the West Coast – in particular, Los Angeles. The concept of Modernism was bound up in the very construction of the Greater Los Angeles area, at a time when the city was just beginning to come into its own as an international, cultural centre.

Modern jazz was also popular with West Coast teens during the ‘50s. Local artists Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker were among the many popular LA jazzmen recording for World Pacific Records. Surf filmmaker Bruce Brown (The Endless Summer, 1965) used label artist Bud Shank to provide the soundtrack for two of his early films, Slippery When Wet and Barefoot Adventure, and The Beach Boys would in turn record their first demos at the World Pacific studio. ‘We used to like to go down to the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa to see Stan Kenton’s band play,’ said hot-rod designer Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth. It was from Kenton’s band that most of the West Coast cool school emerged.

Brian Wilson’s particular favourites, The Four Freshmen and The Hi Lo’s, were vocal groups who had copped their vocal licks from the modern-jazz progressions set forth by Lambert, Hendricks And Ross. Their sound weaved through the tapestry of primeval music that Wilson would create with The Beach Boys, a reverb-laden surf guitar band featuring vocals swelling with modern-jazz phraseology. By 1959, one of the earliest LA rock ’n’ roll stations, KRLA, had already dubbed their air space ‘Modern Radio/Los Angeles’, and the stage was duly set for the sophistication that Wilson would bring to the genre. ‘Good Vibrations was Modern,’ Wilson once said in a televised interview. ‘It was a very Modern-sounding record.’

Prior to the 1950s, LA had been a retreat where movies were filmed, but after World War II a mass exodus began and people sought to escape to its balmy climate. Soldiers who had been stationed in the South Seas would opt for a life experience closer to the idyllic nature they’d witnessed during their tenure in the Pacific theatre of war, and remnants of their fascination with exotica can be seen throughout Los Angeles today, in a restaurant- and apartment-building fad based on author James Michener’s Tales Of The South Pacific and scientific explorer Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki, popular books that were developed into successful films in both the music and documentary fields. The vibe of Los Angeles had become a concoction of primitive Pacific island culture and Space Age futurama.

Prior to World War II, the primary architectural styles developed by the city were Art Deco and Moderne, and in these styles City Hall, the Memorial Coliseum (built for the 1932 Olympic Games), Bullocks-Wilshire and Union Station are definitive examples of pre-War design by architects John and Donald Parkinson. After World War II, however, Welton Becket & Associates became the architectural firm primarily responsible for the final phase of the city’s construction, a company whose Modernist swarm was evocative of the optimism seen in LA’s future, as demonstrated by the Capitol Records tower on Vine Street, the Cineramadome on Sunset Boulevard, the Pan-Pacific Auditorium in the Fairfax district, the Music Center downtown, the Los Angeles Airport Theme Building and the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium out by the beach. In 1964, The Beach Boys would co-headline the Civic with James Brown And His Famous Flames, The Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, Jan And Dean, Gerry And The Pacemakers, Lesley Gore and a host of Motown’s finest acts, including The Miracles, Marvin Gaye and The Supremes – all for a progressive concert film dubbed The TAMI Show. Optimism, as depicted and heard on The Beach Boys’ definitive All Summer Long LP, had become the ubiquitous feel of Los Angeles by this time.

Although it’s difficult to see today, the construction of LA had left room for the natural beauty of its surroundings to be thoroughly enjoyed by its inhabitants. The designers had set it up in a fashion whereby auto transport and multiple freeways put everyone in touch with the riches of local mountains at Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear Lake, with equal proximity to the rugged coastline at places like Malibu or Rincon. ‘You can come with me, to the mountains or the sea if you want to,’ sang Dean Torrence on the 1966 Jan And Dean B-side ‘California Lullaby’. What the record doesn’t actually spell out, however, is that, for kicks, some LA youths would take advantage of winter time, with its great morning surfing, then buzz up to the snows for the afternoon. It could be done in an hour’s drive, before the freeways became obsolete during the early 1980s.

Before that eventuality took place, the Modernist environment allowed young Angelenos to form an identity around the unique aesthetics of the city and apply them to a new approach in forming rock ’n’ roll bands. In 1960, The Gamblers recorded a local instrumental hit titled ‘Moon Dawg’ that was based on a character from the 1959 beach flick Gidget. In quick succession, 1961 brought hits by LA outfits The Frogmen (‘Underwater’), Dick Dale And His Del-Tones (‘Let’s Go Trippin’’), The Belairs (‘Mr Moto’), The Beach Boys (‘Surfin’’) and The Marketts (‘Surfer’s Stomp’). A genre was being formed, adopting the moniker of ‘surf music’.

In early 1962, The Beach Boys participated in the making of a short film titled One Man’s Challenge, about the creation of teenage nightclubs as a positive solution to the previous ‘50s ‘problem’ of juvenile delinquency, recording instrumental surf versions of Lionel Hampton’s ‘Midnight Sun’, Ricky Nelson’s ‘Lonesome Town’, ‘Do The Mashed Potatoes’ by Nat Kendrick And The Swans (a pseudonym for James Brown’s Famous Flames, led by the drummer) and an early take of their own ‘Surf Jam’. Before a live audience, the Pendeltonclad Beach Boys (with Brian Wilson featuring a dab of blond peroxide in his side-parted fringe) mimed to a rauncy, pre-Capitol recording of ‘Surfin’ Safari’. Dennis Wilson pounded away at the skins like the raw caveman that he was, and Carl ripped through a surf guitar solo that didn’t mess around. The stage was filled with orbs, nautical rope, a thatch hut and a huge Tiki – all in the inland foothill town of Azusa.

In what might be considered extreme sports today, the pastimes of these teenagers revolved around activities not necessarily part of, say, the Philadelphia lifestyles seen on American Bandstand. Surfing, skateboarding, skiing and an obsession with custom hot rods dominated male high-school conversation in a way that kept baseball, football and other mainstream American sports on a less than even keel. The best part about surfing and hot-rodding, of course, was their detachment from the status quo. Surfers, in particular, were outsiders from the get-go, and didn’t take on the kind of jock mentality so associated with football games. Although The Beach Boys would make a concession to this national sport with ‘Be True To Your School’ in 1963, the heart of their subject matter would lie in a celebration of things unique to Los Angeles and Brian Wilson’s desire to share that joy with people throughout America.

Brian Wilson’s defining moment came when he suggested, ‘If everybody had an ocean across the USA, then everybody’d be surfin’ just like California.’ Wilson’s song continues as a running joke on Chuck Berry’s ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’, talking about beach trunks, loose Mexican footwear and the straggly long hair associated with hangin’ out at the beach too much and just lettin’ it dry after bein’ in the water all day long (much like his brother Dennis, who, unlike Brian, did surf). American youth bought up this mental picture of an exotic paradise from the records hook, line and sinker.

Once they’d signed to Capitol Records, The Beach Boys (named after a group of Waikiki surfing teachers and tourist entertainers) became a national act. Along with New York City’s The Four Seasons, they were considered the most popular band in America. Both groups were enjoying hit after hit during 1962 and 1963, and as if to drive the point home the Los Angeles Dodgers – now ensconced in their Modernist stadium in the hills above downtown LA – swept the mighty New York Yankees four straight games in baseball’s World Series in October 1963. This landmark event in America’s national pastime happened behind the performance of a young Jewish kid, Sandy Koufax, whom ageless New York baseball ‘professor’ Casey Stengel considered the greatest pitcher who had ever played the game. Dick Dale And His Del-Tones followed the Dodger championship series with a powerful appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, featuring surfing footage and performances of their two most dynamic instrumental recordings: ‘Miserlou’ and ‘The Wedge’.

LA teens were experiencing euphoria; a cascading momentum had come their way, and American International Pictures began to exploit this energy with a smash drive-in movie series that began with Beach Party, starring Disney child star Annette Funicello and Philadelphia teen idol Frankie Avalon, but it was Dick Dale And His Del-Tones who provided the beat in a co-starring role as the beatnik (surf) band. The movie was followed up by the wild and wacky Muscle Beach Party, for which Brian Wilson supplied the soundtrack tunes and music production, with Dick Dale and his crew again turning up as the house band. In all, over 40 Gidget/Beach Party knock-offs would flood US theatres between 1963 and 1967, and the ebullience of sunshine pop would colour the go-go dancing on television variety shows and commercials until the end of the decade. Clairol’s Summer Blonde hair dye would run neck and neck with Yardley’s Carnaby Street make-up line as a crucial female look, even during the mid-’60s Mod youthquake. Within months of the surfing craze, Dick Clark would move American Bandstand to the new teenage paradise on the West Coast.

‘I was aware of his music in ‘62,’ said folk musician Van Dyke Parks, ‘at the Balboa Peninsula. That was where I first heard The Beach Boys, at the Rendezvous Ballroom. I was at the Prison of Socrates, and Brian was playing rock ’n’ roll. I was playing acoustic music in a coffee house, and they had a throng cheering them at an adjacent rock ’n’ roll venue. I was just a person with a car, with a little radio in it, and I would hear Beach Boys songs from time to time, but I was not a record-buyer. That was eye-opening for me. That changed my life.’

Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows were not the only thing happening in teenage Hollywood. Another lure outside its ‘weather’ lifestyle was Hollywood’s genuine facility as a media centre. One only had to listen to the records being produced by Phil Spector to hear that. The sound coming out of Gold Star Studios ranged from Eddie Cochran’s rock ’n’ roll masterworks to the Mexican-tinged cocktail classics of Herb Alpert And The Tijuana Brass.

Phil Spector, however, was a whole ‘nuther story. His records brought the cinematic grandeur of Hollywood epics such as Gone With The Wind to three-minute rock ’n’ roll singles. This wide-angle lens in sound spread from the realism of The Crystals’ ‘Uptown’ and the exuberance of ‘Da Do Ron Ron’ through to the romanticism of The Ronettes’ ‘Be My Baby’ and ‘Walking In The Rain’. Phil Spector brought The Ronettes’ music to unheard-of dramatics, surging like a Wagner opera in unreleased sessions of ‘Paradise’ and ‘I Wish I Never Saw The Sunshine’, while developing landmark hits such as The Righteous Brothers’ ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’’, ‘Unchained Melody’ and ‘Just Once In My Life’. Spector’s sense of grandiose recording reached its peak behind The Righteous Brothers’ ‘Ebb Tide’ and a couple of 45s by Ike And Tina Turner in 1966: ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ and ‘I’ll Never Need More Than This’.

This was the height of Modern sound, with Phil Spector’s recording motto – ‘Tomorrow’s sound today’ – epitomising the glaze associated with his fantastic production toppings. Spector’s bells and chimes, and even the horns on the Ronettes album track ‘How Does It Feel’, seem to capture the magic of Hollywood at night time: twinkling lights of Nuetra, Shindler and Lautner homes in the Hollywood Hills offset by movie-premiere klieg lights stabbing across the sky. The buzz of these, and the aura of Hollywood Boulevard’s skyline, was synonymous with action! … and allure. Brian Wilson would do everything he could to understand how one could capture this kind of lightning in a jar.

2 Found: A New Place Where The Kids Are Hip

In a world before extreme traffic, the suburbs of Los Angeles really felt more like bedroom communities, places where people went to sleep, woke up and sent their kids off to school.

The Beach Boys hopped onto the freeway innumerable times to play gigs in this Greater Los Angeles area, in places such as Pomona’s Rainbow Gardens, where in 1958 Jan And Arnie split a bill with Ritchie Valens and where an interracial house band called The Mixtures featured a Chicano, an Italian, a Chinese, a white guy and a black guy. An early Afro-American newscaster (then DJ) by the name of Larry McCormick would host the shows. The Beach Boys would also play at an Art Deco malt shop called Currie’s in Culver City, Barnes Park Community Center in Monterey Park, at the opening of a shopping centre in Oxnard, at a New Year’s Eve memorial concert for Ritchie Valens in Long Beach and out in Orange County at the Retail Clerk’s Hall – a hardcore bastion of surf instrumental music, where Eddie And The Showmen, The Chantays, The Pyramids, The Lively Ones and The Surfaris gigged regularly. They also appeared at the Surf Fair in Santa Monica and at film screenings for Bruce Brown, as far south as Wind ’n’ Sea in San Diego.

Closer to the centre of the action, the group would play to rousing audiences in 1963 at the Cinnamon Cinder, a teenage nightclub with annexes in Studio City and Long Beach. The club was owned by KFWB disc jockey Bob Eubanks, and headlining bands at the Cinnamon Cinder would open up at the Long Beach location and then drive up to play a closing set in Studio City.

One early gig put The Beach Boys at the centre of the action, at Pandora’s Box on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip. Here the teenagers from Hawthorne took the stage for a month across the street from the Chateau Marmont, down the hill road from Laurel Canyon on a traffic island between Schwab’s Drug Store and the lot that had until only a few years previously been the Garden of Allah. This engagement was promoted by KFWB disc jockey Jimmy O’Neill, who would go on to host ABC-TV’s rock ’n’ roll extravaganza Shindig! (produced by British expatriate genius Jack Good, post-Six-Five Special and Oh Boy!). The house band at Pandora’s Box during this period were The Fencemen, who featured the talents of Phil Spector session pianist Leon Russell and guitarist/songwriter David Gates, who both went on to enjoy individual success in the late ‘60s, Leon as a solo artist and David as a key member of Bread.

There was a sense of excitement surrounding Pandora’s Box, an establishment originally co-owned by Tom Ewell (who’d starred in The Seven Year Itch with Marilyn Monroe and The Girl Can’t Help It with Jayne Mansfield) and bongo player Preston Epps, who’d led another Pandora’s Box house band for years and had enjoyed several rock ’n’ roll hits, including ‘Bongo Rock’, ‘Bongo Party’ and ‘Bongo, Bongo, Bongo’. The place was known to have a beatnik vibe and sat amidst Sunset Strip bebop clubs such as the Renaissance, the Crescendo, the Interlude and the Purple Onion, although of these clubs only the Sea Witch featured rock ’n’ roll on a regular basis, prior to O’Neill absconding with Pandora’s Box. After he’d taken the helm as primary booker, The Fencemen would back rising local talents such as Jan And Dean, Dobie Gray and Jackie DeShannon at the club.

The Beach Boys’ stint turned out to be Pandora’s coup de grâce, as well as the band’s introduction to the glitter and glamour associated with Hollywood. There had been other gigs in Tinseltown, to be sure, but the Pandora’s Box engagement was special. During one performance, Brian leaned over and asked a girl if he could have a sip of her hot chocolate, and clumsily spilling it on Marilyn Rovell’s table would lead him permanently out of Hawthorne.

Brian began to date Marilyn shortly afterwards, and the 15-year old’s parents turned out to be pretty hip, allowing Wilson a refuge away from his home. Indeed, Irving and Mae Rovell treated Brian like a son, allowing him to sleep over at his girlfriend’s house – an unusual arrangement for a teenage romance. At the Rovell home, Brian found a refuge from the backwards stress of his own dysfunctional father, Murry Wilson, who by this time had become The Beach Boys’ manager. Brian also began to enjoy direct access to the Hollywood living environment; instead of the post-War dingbat homes of Hawthorne, he was walking neighbourhood streets lined with palm trees and Spanish mansions.

As all of this was going on, Brian stretched his independence by moving out of his father’s house and into an apartment with close friend Bob Norberg. Brian had formed a kind of side band with Norberg, Rich Arlarian and Dave Nowlen, who collectively called themselves The Survivors, and Brian and Bob had begun to use a Wollensack recorder to make demos in the apartment bedroom. As simple as the setup was, it is here that we observe the artist as a young man. Recorded in the apartment, The Survivors’ 45 B-side ‘After The Game’ is a melodic instrumental that betrays Brian’s flair for exotica that would turn up later in ‘Summer Means New Love’, ‘Pet Sounds’ and on the backing track of several Smile pieces, including ‘Holidays’, ‘Wind Chimes’, ‘Love To Say Dada’ and ‘Child Is Father Of The Man’. The percussion on ‘After The Game’ was provided by hitting a wood bedpost with a stick, but this echoed the more textured percussion on ‘Caroline, No’, which was actually a recording of Hal Blaine hitting a plastic water bottle, swathed in echo. Some of Brian’s early knack for percussive effect was appreciated by Andy Warhol, who, in his first feature-length film, Tarzan and Jane Regained … Sort Of (shot in LA in 1963, shortly after his debut of the Campbell’s soup-can paintings at Ferus Gallery on La Cienega), used ‘Denny’s Drums’ from Shut Down Vol II during one of the jungle scenes.

Brian was becoming obsessively prolific as a songwriter, and it was paying off with a stream of hit records for The Beach Boys. Meanwhile, The Survivors and a girl group called The Honeys – featuring Marilyn Rovell, Diane Rovell and their cousin Ginger Blake – would take up his spare time during this period.

In as early as 1963, Brian’s obsession with songwriting and recording kept him off the road for a Beach Boys summer tour. In the interim, he recorded The Beach Boys’ third album, Surfer Girl, the first to be augmented by studio musicians such as Hal Blaine, who provided drums for ‘Little Deuce Coupe’. But there was more, and The Survivors filled the gap. Surfer Girl was the first Beach Boys LP to bear the credit ‘produced by Brian Wilson’,¹ and one of the hidden tricks of this hit-laden disc is the presence of The Survivors on many of the vocal parts that would have been sung by The Beach Boys, had they not been on the road. So complete was the absorption of the Brian Wilson harmony technique that a Survivors single titled ‘Wich Stand’, which sang the praises of the Googie architecture cruise site, was not released by Capitol because, according to execs, ‘it sounded too much like The Beach Boys’. Only ‘Pamela Jean’ was released, and that sounded like Dion And The Belmonts.

It was while engaged in this interior work that Al Jardine, a friend of Brian’s from high school (and who’d played stand-up bass on The Beach Boys’ 1961 Candix Records hit ‘Surfin’’), joined with rhythm guitarist David Marks, drummer Dennis Wilson, lead guitarist Carl Wilson and vocalist/saxophonist Mike Love for shows. Meanwhile, Brian slugged away at Western Recorders on Sunset Boulevard, near Vine, releasing discs by The Beach Boys, The Honeys, The Survivors, TV star Paul Petersen, Gary Usher, Glen Campbell and a Chicano singer named Sharon Marie Esparza. Under the stage name ‘Sharon Marie’, the latter released ‘Thinkin’ ‘Bout You Baby’, a riveting girl-group disc that would later be rewritten as ‘Darlin’’ for Redwood.

As if this wasn’t enough, Brian had also struck up a close friendship with Jan Berry of Jan And Dean, an advanced, talented young producer, but one who was a bit more willing

Reviews for Smile

[Ed Acquesta · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Brian Wilson is an American Treasure...this book is his story of triumph of the artist against internal and external forces. Brian was a very sensitive person and the world closed in on him....great book...great story...inspiring for musicians and artists.

Surfs Up...aha!

[ralphz-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Every now and then, I find a book that thrills me with its promise. After all, who doesn't want to know the full story behind one of the great missing pieces of music in history? And then, you read it. Sigh. This book is not a balanced look at Brian Wilson's lost "Smile" album. It is a Wilson fanboy's look at how wrong the Beach Boys, and everyone else, was. The author, we find our very late, is tight with the Brian Wilson side, and strongly against the other members of the Beach Boys, which of course colors his story. It even leads him to make a few wild assertions. For example, he agrees that maybe their publicist in 1966-67 was actually a spy planted by their friendly rivals, the Beatles. They must have heard an early mix of "Smile," which led them to create "Sgt. Pepper."Uh, no. Unfortunately, this book is largely the recollections of one man - and not even Brian Wilson himself. The vast majority seems to come from Van Dyke Parks, the lyricist who worked with Wilson at the time. Other voices are very late to the game, and not very important. This is not really a comprehensive book on one of the most important albums of the rock era. It's a fanzine article that goes on far too long.Read more of my reviews on Ralphsbooks.