Smile (The Beach Boys Album) - Project Collapse

Project Collapse

Brian Wilson began to encounter serious problems with Smile around late November 1966; some of this can be ascribed to his increasingly fragile mental state (by then, he was beginning to exhibit signs of depression and paranoia) and resistance to the project from within the band.

Following the recording session for the "Fire" section of the "Elements Suite" at Gold Star Studios on November 28, Brian became irrationally concerned that the music had been responsible for starting several fires in the neighborhood of the studio. Wilson falsely claimed for many years that he had burned these session tapes, but that was not the case, although he did abandon the "Fire" piece for good. It has also been noted that Parks deliberately stayed away from the session—during which Wilson encouraged the musicians to wear toy firemen hats—and that he later described Brian's behavior as "regressive"

It was sometime in this period that Wilson went to see the film Seconds, which had a brief profound impact on him. Wilson had entered the theater late, and immediately upon arriving heard Rock Hudson's character "Mr. Wilson" greeted on screen, mistaking that the film was talking directly to him. He would expound on the experience saying that it had "completely blown" his mind, and that, "The whole thing was there. I mean my whole life. Birth and death and rebirth. The whole thing. Even the beach was in it, a whole thing about the beach. It was my whole life right there on the screen. I mean, look at Spector, he could be involved in it, couldn't he? He’s going into films. How hard would it be for him to set up something like that?" Wilson had already developed an obsession with the music of Phil Spector upon hearing the song "Be My Baby" by The Ronettes a few years earlier. During the Smile era, he would say, "Spector started the whole thing. He was the first one to use the studio. But I've gone beyond him now. I’m doing the spiritual sound. I heard that song three and a half years ago and I knew that it was between him and me. I knew exactly where he was at and now I've gone beyond him. You can understand how that movie might get someone upset under those circumstances."

By the beginning of 1967, Brian's behavior became increasingly erratic, and his use of drugs escalated. While his actions were a concern for some of his friends and stories of his sometimes bizarre "off-duty" behavior became the stuff of legend, the session musicians who worked with him during this period have stated that he was totally professional in the studio.

In addition to Brian's mental health problems, and his many personal, family and creative pressures, there were other significant business and legal pressures surrounding the Beach Boys during the recording of Smile. These included Carl Wilson's call-up notice for the draft (which he was to fight as a conscientious objector), plus the commencement of the group's contractual dispute with Capitol over royalty payments. In addition, there was the band's attempt to terminate their then-present contract, which was a legacy of Murry's management, and establish their own label, Brother Records. Bruce Johnston has also indicated in a web forum discussion that there was also opposition to the project from Capitol Records and from Murry Wilson.

Conflict within the group was also a potential factor in the demise of Smile. The December 6, 1966 session for "Cabin Essence" was famously the scene of a argument between Van Dyke Parks and Mike Love where the latter questioned Parks about the meaning of the song's lyrics, displaying uncertainty over whether they'd be appreciated and understood by the fanbase the band had built their commercial standing upon.

Love was also critical of the drug culture the period brought to the group, observing the detrimental affects it played on his cousin. He has hypothesised that his vocal opposition to those who supplied Brian with hard drugs caused those participants to spin a web that pinned Love himself as the reason Smile was shelved, saying it was largely perpetuated by writers who weren't there. Van Dyke Parks disagreed with this somewhat, believing Love's indifference to Smile as one of the factors in Brian's decision to abandon the project.

Despite his reservations to the lyrics, Love dutifully followed the creative vision of Wilson, contributing vocals to the material and following Wilson's quirky requests to engage in odd behaviour such as acting as an animal on the floor while recording backing vocals, later stating that his misgivings laid only within the lyrics and not the music.

On the December 15 vocal sessions for "Surf's Up" and "Wonderful". The group was filmed by CBS during this session which was reported to have went "very badly". Although there were more Smile sessions (on December 23, January 9, and January 23), work on the major tracks effectively stopped after December 15.

Reportedly, Brian's first exposure to the Beatles' single "Strawberry Fields Forever" affected him. He heard the song while driving his car and pulled over to listen; later commenting with a laugh to his passenger, Michael Vosse, that the Beatles had "got there first". This event reportedly made him question whether the Smile aesthetic had already become dated.

After the episode, Wilson vehemently continued work mostly on "Heroes and Villains". Throughout the first half of 1967, the album's release date was repeatedly postponed as Wilson tinkered with the recordings, experimenting with different takes and mixes, unable or unwilling to supply a completed version of the album. In early March 1967, after gradually distancing himself from Wilson and the group, Van Dyke Parks left the project in the wake of signing a record deal with Warner Bros. Records so he could work on his debut album Song Cycle. Later elaborating on his decision to leave, Parks noted, “Brian’s passion for drugs was overwhelming to me, and that’s why I left the project when I did. It was a little too much to be of real practical value and would lead to destruction. Of course, it had a great deal to do with his psychological collapse."

Capitol evidently still hoped to the last that Smile might eventually appear, but on May 6, only a few weeks before the release of the Beatles' perennial Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, The Beach Boys' press officer Derek Taylor announced to the British press that the Smile project had been shelved, and that the album would not be released.

Jack Rieley wrote during a 1996 online Q&A that the commercial failure of "Heroes and Villains" was the final cataclysmic blow to the Smile project and Wilson's self-confidence as a musician.

Brian blirted it out one evening at Bellagio, and later spoke about it several times in agonizing detail. He had expected that 'Heroes' would be greeted by Capitol as the work which put the Beach Boys on a creative par with the Beatles. All the adoration and promotional backup Capitol was giving the Beatles would also flow to his music because of Heroes, he thought. And the public? It would greet 'Heroes' with the same level of overwhelming enthusiasm that the Beatles got with record after record. As it was, Capitol execs were divided about 'Heroes'. Some loved it but others castigated the track, longing instead for still more surfing/cars songs. The public bought the record in respectable but surely not wowy zowy numbers. For Brian, this was the ultimate failure. His surfing/car songs were the ones they loved the most. His musical growth, unlike that of Messrs. Lennon and McCartney, did not translate into commercial ascendancy or public glory.

Jack Rieley,

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