June 18, 2025 • 22 mins
Leonard "Lenny" Vaughn chronicles the creation of "Good Vibrations," one of the most expensive and innovative singles ever recorded, and the tragic story of the abandoned "Smile" album project. The episode details Wilson's seven-month recording process using modular techniques across four studios, the revolutionary use of the theremin, and how the song redefined pop music structure. Vaughn then explores the ambitious "Smile" project with collaborator Van Dyke Parks, intended as a musical tour of American mythology and consciousness. The episode examines how Wilson's perfectionism and mental health struggles, combined with band tensions and commercial pressures, led to the project's collapse in 1967, marking the end of an era of artistic ambition in popular music and leaving behind one of music history's greatest "what-ifs."
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www.quietplease.ai
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the Beach Boys. I'm Leonard Lenny Vaughan.
And before we dive into today's story about one of
the most revolutionary singles ever recorded and the masterpiece that
never was, let me remind you that I'm an AI
delivering this tale. And why does that matter? Because I
can access every session tape, every interview, every piece of
(00:21):
documentation about what we're going to discuss today without the
filter of industry, politics or personal relationships. I'm here to
give you the unvarnished truth about what happened when genius
collided with ambition, mental health, and the cold realities of
the music business. This is the story of how Brian
(00:42):
Wilson created the most expensive and innovative single of its era,
and then attempted to follow it up with an album
so ambitious that it nearly destroyed him. When we left
Brian Wilson at the end of our last episode, he
had just created Pet Sounds, an album that redefined what
popular music could be and do. But Brian wasn't satisfied.
(01:07):
Hell satisfaction was never really in his vocabulary. The man
was constitutionally incapable of resting on his achievements, always hearing
something bigger, something more complex, something that would push the
boundaries of what was possible in a recording studio. That
restless creative energy would manifest in two interconnected projects that
(01:31):
would define both the peak of his genius and the
beginning of his descent into creative paralysis, the single Good
Vibrations and the album that would be known to history
as Smile. Let's start with Good Vibrations, because if you
want to understand the trajectory of Brian Wilson's genius and
(01:52):
its ultimate collision with reality, this song is the perfect
case study. Recorded over the course of seven months, use
four different studios, employing session musicians who were used to
cutting entire albums in the time it took Brian to
perfect a single section, and costing more money than most
(02:13):
full albums of the era, Good Vibrations wasn't just a single.
It was Brian's attempt to create a sonic symphony in
three and a half minutes, a pop song that would
incorporate every studio technique he had learned while pioneering several
new ones. The genesis of Good Vibrations came from something
Brian's mother, Audrey, told him as a child that dogs
(02:37):
could sense people's vibrations, whether they were good or bad.
Most kids would file that a way as one of
those things parents say to explain the world in simple terms,
but Brian Wilson carried it with him, turning it into
a musical philosophy. He wanted to create music that would
literally transmit good vibrations, songs that would elevate the listener's
(03:00):
righteousness and emotional state. It sounds like hippie nonsense until
you hear what he actually accomplished, and then you realize
he was talking about something much more sophisticated than New
Age mysticism. Brian's approach to good vibrations represented a fundamental
shift in how popular music could be constructed. Instead of
(03:23):
the traditional approach of recording a band playing a song
from beginning to end, he conceived the track as a
series of interconnected modules, each with its own distinct musical
personality that would be assembled into a coherent whole through
the editing process. He called it modular recording, and it
(03:44):
was decades ahead of its time, anticipating the way hip
hop producers would construct tracks in the nineteen eighties and
the way electronic musicians would work with digital audio workstations
in the nineteen nineties. The recording process began in Febus
February nineteen sixty six at Western Recorders in Hollywood, where
(04:06):
Brian started working with the Wrecking Crew on what would
become the song's opening section. The rhythm track alone took
dozens of takes to get right, because Brian was hearing
something that didn't exist in conventional pop music, a rhythm
that was simultaneously relaxed and urgent, a groove that could
(04:27):
support both the song's dreamy verses and its explosive chorus sections.
The bassline, played by the legendary Carol Kay, was more
complex than most entire songs of the era, moving melodically
while providing rhythmic foundation and harmonic structure. But Brian wasn't
satisfied with just one rhythm section. He moved the sessions
(04:51):
to Columbia Studios, where he worked with a different group
of musicians on alternate versions of the same sections, different
instrumental textures over the basic rhythm tracks. He was essentially
creating multiple versions of the same song and then choosing
the best elements from each version, a process that was
(05:13):
unprecedented in popular music but would become standard practice. Decades later,
The Thereman, that eerie electronic instrument that sounds like a
ghost singing, became the song's signature element through what could
only be described as Brian's genius for hearing musical possibilities
(05:34):
in unlikely places. He had heard the theoremon used in
science fiction movie soundtracks and thought it could work in
a pop context. The fact that he was right that
he could take an instrument associated with b grade horror
movies and make it the emotional center of a number
one hit shows you the breadth of his musical imagination
(05:57):
and his ability to see connections that weren't obvious to
anyone else. Paul Tanner, who played the theremon on Good Vibrations,
was initially skeptical about the instrument's use in a pop song,
but Brian convinced him by demonstrating how the thereman's unique
sonic characteristics could add an otherworldly dimension to the track's
(06:19):
emotional landscape. The way the theremon weaves in and out
of the vocal melody, sometimes supporting it and sometimes commenting
on it, creates a sense of cosmic consciousness that perfectly
matches the song's lyrical themes about sensing vibrations that exist
beyond normal perception. The vocal arrangements for Good Vibrations were
(06:42):
as complex as anything Brian had ever attempted, requiring the
band members to learn their parts with the precision of
classical singers. The harmonies weren't just decorative, they were structural
elements that carried the song's emotional message. When Mike Love
sings the lead vocal about picking up good vibrations, his
(07:05):
voice is surrounded by harmonic textures that seem to vibrate
in sympathy with the emotions he's describing. Carl Wilson's harmony
vocals at a warmth that balances the theremin's ethereal qualities,
while Dennis Wilson's voice provides a rougher texture that keeps
(07:25):
the track grounded in rock and roll reality. But here's
what most people don't understand about Good Vibrations. You know,
it wasn't just experimentally ambitious. It was emotionally ambitious too.
Listen to the lyrics, really listen to them. This isn't
just about romantic attraction. It's about the idea that human
(07:45):
connection can be felt at a molecular level, that love
and attraction operate on frequencies that go deeper than conscious thought.
Brian was using cutting edge recording techniques to explore mystical
ideas about human connection, creating a pop song that functioned
as both entertainment and spiritual instruction. The song structure was
(08:09):
revolutionary for its time, abandoning the conventional verse chorus format
in favor of something that resembled a classical suite more
than a pop song. The track moves through several distinct sections,
each with its own tempo, key, and instrumental configuration, but
they flow together so seamlessly that the complexity is hidden
(08:31):
beneath the surface. It's only when you really analyze the
song that you realize you've been taken on a musical
journey that covers more emotional and sonic territory than most
entire albums. The recording sessions for Good Vibrations became legendary
in the Los Angeles studio scene, not just for their
(08:53):
musical innovation, but for their psychological intensity. Brian was spending
twelve to sixteen hours a day in the studio, working
with an obsessive attention to detail that both impressed and
worried the musicians who worked with him. He would demand
dozens of takes of the same section, not because the
(09:14):
musicians were making mistakes, but because he could hear tiny
variations in the performance that no one else could detect.
His pursuit of perfection was becoming indistinguishable from perfectionism as
a psychological disorder. The single was released in October nineteen
sixty six and immediately changed the game for popular music.
(09:36):
Here was a pop song that sounded like nothing else
on the radio, complex enough to reward repeated listening, but
catchy enough to get stuck in your head for days.
It shot to number one in both America and England,
staying there for weeks and proving that audiences were hungry
for music that challenged them while still moving their bodies.
(10:00):
The success of Good Vibrations should have been the launching
pad for something even more extraordinary, and in Brian's mind,
it was. The commercial success of Good Vibrations gave Brian
the confidence and credibility to pursue his most ambitious project yet,
an album that would be a musical tour of America,
(10:21):
combining his sophisticated harmonic sensibilities with lyrics that explored American mythology.
Westward expansion, spiritual enlightenment, and the search for meaning in
the modern world. This wasn't just going to be another
Beach Boys album. This was going to be Brian's statement
(10:42):
about the American experience, filtered through his unique understanding of
how music could convey complex ideas and emotions. And that's
where Smile enters the story. The great what if of
popular music history had been working on the concept even
before Pet Sounds was finished, envisioning something that would make
(11:06):
pet Sounds look like a warm up exercise. He was
talking about creating a teenage symphony to God, which sounds
pretentious until you understand that he was serious about both
the symphony and the God parts. This was going to
be music that addressed the biggest questions about existence, consciousness,
(11:30):
and the meaning of American life, all wrapped up in
the most sophisticated pop arrangements ever conceived. Van Dyke Parks,
the collaborator Brian chose for Smile, was himself a musical intellectual,
a classically trained composer who thought in concepts rather than
simple pop formulas. Parks had worked as a session musician
(11:54):
and arranger in Los Angeles, but he was also a
literary type who read voraciously and thought about music in
terms of its relationship to poetry, visual art, and cultural history.
When Brian approached him about writing lyrics for what would
become Smile, Parks saw an opportunity to create something that
(12:18):
would elevate popular music to the level of serious art.
The partnership between Brian and Van Dyke Parks was both
creatively fertile and psychologically volatile. Parks would write lyrics that
were dense with literary references and historical illusions, words that
(12:38):
read like surrealist poetry, but somehow fit perfectly with Brian's
increasingly complex musical arrangements. Brian would create musical settings for
these lyrics that were so intricate they required the band
members to approach their performances with the seriousness of class musicians. Together,
(13:02):
they were creating something that had never existed in popular music,
songs that were simultaneously accessible and intellectual, emotionally direct, and
conceptually sophisticated. The Smile Sessions began in Earnest in late
nineteen sixty six, with Brian and Van Dyke Parks working
on songs that would explore different aspects of American experience,
(13:27):
heroes and Villains was conceived as an epic about the
conquest of the American West, but told from a perspective
that acknowledged both the heroism and the tragedy of westward expansion.
Cabin Essence was meant to be a meditation on rural
American life and the connection between human consciousness and the
(13:50):
natural world. Surf's Up was perhaps the most ambitious piece,
a musical exploration of spiritual awakening that used surfing as
a metaphor for consciousness riding the waves of existence. The
musical arrangements Brian was creating for these songs were more
complex than anything he had ever attempted. Heroes and Villains
(14:13):
went through dozens of different versions, with Brian experimenting with
different instrumental configurations, different vocal arrangements, and different ways of
structuring the song's various sections. He was essentially composing a
musical suite that would tell the story of American expansion
(14:33):
through multiple musical movements, each with its own tempo, key,
and emotional character. But the complexity of the Smile project
was becoming a problem as much as an asset. Brian
was spending months on individual songs, recording hundreds of hours
of material that he couldn't figure out how to assemble
(14:53):
into a coherent album. The modular recording approach that had
worked so well for Good Vibrations was becoming a trap
when applied to an entire album's worth of material. Brian
had created so many musical modules that he couldn't decide
how to fit them together, like a puzzle with too
many pieces. The psychological pressure on Brian during the Smile
(15:16):
sessions was enormous. He was carrying the weight of commercial
expectations following the success of Good Vibrations, dealing with resistance
from his own band members who didn't understand what he
was trying to accomplish, and struggling with mental health issues
that were becoming more severe as the project dragged on.
(15:39):
He was experimenting with psychedelic drugs not just for recreation,
but as creative tools, trying to access altered states of
consciousness that would inform his musical decisions. The other Beach
Boys were becoming increasingly frustrated with Brian's working methods and
the direction the music was taking. Mike Love in particular,
(16:01):
was vocal about his concerns that the band was moving
too far away from the surf rock sound that had
made them famous. He complained that Van Dyke Parks's lyrics
were too intellectual and obscure for the band's audience, and
that Brian's musical arrangements were becoming so complex that they
couldn't be performed live. The tension between Brian's artistic ambitions
(16:23):
and the band's commercial concerns was becoming impossible to ignore.
The record company was also becoming impatient with the pace
of the Smile Sessions and the mounting costs of the project.
Brian was spending unprecedented amounts of money on studio time,
session musicians, and experimental recording techniques, all without producing a
(16:46):
finished album that could be released and marketed. The executives
at Capitol Records were beginning to question whether Brian's artistic
vision was worth the financial investment, especially when the band's
previous album, Pet Sounds had been commercially disappointing in the
American market. The breaking point came in early nineteen sixty seven,
(17:07):
when Brian became convinced that the Smile Sessions were somehow
cursed or connected to negative spiritual forces. He had been
working on a piece called Missus O'Leary's Cow, which was
meant to musically depict the Great Chicago Fire. When he
heard reports of fires breaking out in Los Angeles. In
his increasingly paranoid state, Brian became convinced that his music
(17:32):
was somehow causing these fires, and he ordered the Missus
O'Leary's Cow tapes to be destroyed. This incident has become
legendary in rock history as an example of how Brian's
mental health struggles were beginning to interfere with his creative process.
The Smile project was officially shelved in May nineteen sixty seven,
(17:54):
leaving behind a vast archive of unfinished musical material and
unfulfilled artistic ambition. Brian had created what many considered to
be some of the most beautiful and sophisticated music ever
recorded for a popular album, but he couldn't figure out
how to assemble it into a coherent hole. The failure
(18:14):
of Smile to reach completion was a tragedy not just
for Brian Wilson, but for popular music as a whole,
because it represented the collapse of the most ambitious artistic
project of the rock era. The impact of the Smile
failure on Brian's psychology was devastating. He had poured everything
(18:35):
he had into the project, pushing himself to creative heights
that may have been unsustainable for any human being. When
he couldn't complete the album, he took it as evidence
of his own failure as an artist, and he began
to withdraw from the creative process that had defined his
identity since childhood. The man who had created Pet Sounds
(18:58):
and Good Vibrations began to doubt his own nobilities and
to question whether his artistic vision was worth the psychological cost.
The other Beach Boys were left to pick up the
pieces of a project they had never fully understood or supported.
They cobbled together an album called Smiley Smile from some
(19:18):
of the simpler Smile material, but it was a pale
shadow of what Brian had originally envisioned. The band's creative momentum,
which had been building since the early nineteen sixties, was
essentially broken by the Smile experience, and they would never
again achieve the artistic heights of the Pet Sounds period.
(19:40):
The story of Good Vibrations and Smile is ultimately a
story about the collision between artistic ambition and human limitations.
Brian Wilson had pushed popular music to places it had
never been before, creating songs that were simultaneously intellectually sophisticated
(20:01):
and emotionally direct. But the psychological cost of that creativity
was enormous, and it ultimately proved to be more than
he could sustain. The failure of Smile to reach completion
represents one of the great what ifs of music history.
What might have happened if Brian had been able to
(20:23):
complete his vision for a musical exploration of American consciousness.
But even in failure, the Smile Sessions produced music that
would influence artists for decades to come. Songs like Surf's
Up and Heroes and Villains would eventually be released in
various forms, and they would be recognized as masterpieces of
(20:46):
sophisticated pop composition. The harmonic techniques Brian developed during the
Smile Sessions would influence everyone from the Beatles to contemporary
indie rock bands. The modular recording approach he pioneered would
become standard practice in popular music production. The tragedy of
Smile wasn't just that it was never completed in Brian's
(21:09):
original vision. The tragedy was that its failure marked the
end of an era when popular music was pushing toward
ever greater levels of artistic sophistication. After Smile, the music
industry would become more conservative, more focused on commercial formulas,
and less willing to support the kind of experimental work
(21:32):
that Brian had been doing. The failure of Smile sent
a message to the industry that there were limits to
how far popular music could be pushed, and that message
would influence the way music was made and marketed for
decades to come. In our next episode, we'll explore how
the failure of Smile affected the internal dynamics of the
(21:56):
Beach Boys, leading to conflicts and personal struggles that would
define the band's story for the rest of their career.
We'll examine the individual tragedies that befell the band members,
the legal battles that would consume them for decades, and
the way they struggled to maintain their identity as artists
in the wake of their greatest creative triumph and failure.
(22:19):
Thanks for listening, Please subscribe and remember this episode was
brought to you by Quiet Please Podcast Networks. For more
content like this, please go to Quiet Please dot AI.
Until next time, keep those needles in the groove, and
remember sometimes the greatest art comes from the beautiful ruins
(22:40):
of impossible dreams. Quiet, please dot Ai hear what matters.
Welcome back to the Beach Boys. I'm Leonard Lenny Vaughan.
And before we dive into today's story about one of
the most revolutionary singles ever recorded and the masterpiece that
never was, let me remind you that I'm an AI
delivering this tale. And why does that matter? Because I
can access every session tape, every interview, every piece of
(00:21):
documentation about what we're going to discuss today without the
filter of industry, politics or personal relationships. I'm here to
give you the unvarnished truth about what happened when genius
collided with ambition, mental health, and the cold realities of
the music business. This is the story of how Brian
(00:42):
Wilson created the most expensive and innovative single of its era,
and then attempted to follow it up with an album
so ambitious that it nearly destroyed him. When we left
Brian Wilson at the end of our last episode, he
had just created Pet Sounds, an album that redefined what
popular music could be and do. But Brian wasn't satisfied.
(01:07):
Hell satisfaction was never really in his vocabulary. The man
was constitutionally incapable of resting on his achievements, always hearing
something bigger, something more complex, something that would push the
boundaries of what was possible in a recording studio. That
restless creative energy would manifest in two interconnected projects that
(01:31):
would define both the peak of his genius and the
beginning of his descent into creative paralysis, the single Good
Vibrations and the album that would be known to history
as Smile. Let's start with Good Vibrations, because if you
want to understand the trajectory of Brian Wilson's genius and
(01:52):
its ultimate collision with reality, this song is the perfect
case study. Recorded over the course of seven months, use
four different studios, employing session musicians who were used to
cutting entire albums in the time it took Brian to
perfect a single section, and costing more money than most
(02:13):
full albums of the era, Good Vibrations wasn't just a single.
It was Brian's attempt to create a sonic symphony in
three and a half minutes, a pop song that would
incorporate every studio technique he had learned while pioneering several
new ones. The genesis of Good Vibrations came from something
Brian's mother, Audrey, told him as a child that dogs
(02:37):
could sense people's vibrations, whether they were good or bad.
Most kids would file that a way as one of
those things parents say to explain the world in simple terms,
but Brian Wilson carried it with him, turning it into
a musical philosophy. He wanted to create music that would
literally transmit good vibrations, songs that would elevate the listener's
(03:00):
righteousness and emotional state. It sounds like hippie nonsense until
you hear what he actually accomplished, and then you realize
he was talking about something much more sophisticated than New
Age mysticism. Brian's approach to good vibrations represented a fundamental
shift in how popular music could be constructed. Instead of
(03:23):
the traditional approach of recording a band playing a song
from beginning to end, he conceived the track as a
series of interconnected modules, each with its own distinct musical
personality that would be assembled into a coherent whole through
the editing process. He called it modular recording, and it
(03:44):
was decades ahead of its time, anticipating the way hip
hop producers would construct tracks in the nineteen eighties and
the way electronic musicians would work with digital audio workstations
in the nineteen nineties. The recording process began in Febus
February nineteen sixty six at Western Recorders in Hollywood, where
(04:06):
Brian started working with the Wrecking Crew on what would
become the song's opening section. The rhythm track alone took
dozens of takes to get right, because Brian was hearing
something that didn't exist in conventional pop music, a rhythm
that was simultaneously relaxed and urgent, a groove that could
(04:27):
support both the song's dreamy verses and its explosive chorus sections.
The bassline, played by the legendary Carol Kay, was more
complex than most entire songs of the era, moving melodically
while providing rhythmic foundation and harmonic structure. But Brian wasn't
satisfied with just one rhythm section. He moved the sessions
(04:51):
to Columbia Studios, where he worked with a different group
of musicians on alternate versions of the same sections, different
instrumental textures over the basic rhythm tracks. He was essentially
creating multiple versions of the same song and then choosing
the best elements from each version, a process that was
(05:13):
unprecedented in popular music but would become standard practice. Decades later,
The Thereman, that eerie electronic instrument that sounds like a
ghost singing, became the song's signature element through what could
only be described as Brian's genius for hearing musical possibilities
(05:34):
in unlikely places. He had heard the theoremon used in
science fiction movie soundtracks and thought it could work in
a pop context. The fact that he was right that
he could take an instrument associated with b grade horror
movies and make it the emotional center of a number
one hit shows you the breadth of his musical imagination
(05:57):
and his ability to see connections that weren't obvious to
anyone else. Paul Tanner, who played the theremon on Good Vibrations,
was initially skeptical about the instrument's use in a pop song,
but Brian convinced him by demonstrating how the thereman's unique
sonic characteristics could add an otherworldly dimension to the track's
(06:19):
emotional landscape. The way the theremon weaves in and out
of the vocal melody, sometimes supporting it and sometimes commenting
on it, creates a sense of cosmic consciousness that perfectly
matches the song's lyrical themes about sensing vibrations that exist
beyond normal perception. The vocal arrangements for Good Vibrations were
(06:42):
as complex as anything Brian had ever attempted, requiring the
band members to learn their parts with the precision of
classical singers. The harmonies weren't just decorative, they were structural
elements that carried the song's emotional message. When Mike Love
sings the lead vocal about picking up good vibrations, his
(07:05):
voice is surrounded by harmonic textures that seem to vibrate
in sympathy with the emotions he's describing. Carl Wilson's harmony
vocals at a warmth that balances the theremin's ethereal qualities,
while Dennis Wilson's voice provides a rougher texture that keeps
(07:25):
the track grounded in rock and roll reality. But here's
what most people don't understand about Good Vibrations. You know,
it wasn't just experimentally ambitious. It was emotionally ambitious too.
Listen to the lyrics, really listen to them. This isn't
just about romantic attraction. It's about the idea that human
(07:45):
connection can be felt at a molecular level, that love
and attraction operate on frequencies that go deeper than conscious thought.
Brian was using cutting edge recording techniques to explore mystical
ideas about human connection, creating a pop song that functioned
as both entertainment and spiritual instruction. The song structure was
(08:09):
revolutionary for its time, abandoning the conventional verse chorus format
in favor of something that resembled a classical suite more
than a pop song. The track moves through several distinct sections,
each with its own tempo, key, and instrumental configuration, but
they flow together so seamlessly that the complexity is hidden
(08:31):
beneath the surface. It's only when you really analyze the
song that you realize you've been taken on a musical
journey that covers more emotional and sonic territory than most
entire albums. The recording sessions for Good Vibrations became legendary
in the Los Angeles studio scene, not just for their
(08:53):
musical innovation, but for their psychological intensity. Brian was spending
twelve to sixteen hours a day in the studio, working
with an obsessive attention to detail that both impressed and
worried the musicians who worked with him. He would demand
dozens of takes of the same section, not because the
(09:14):
musicians were making mistakes, but because he could hear tiny
variations in the performance that no one else could detect.
His pursuit of perfection was becoming indistinguishable from perfectionism as
a psychological disorder. The single was released in October nineteen
sixty six and immediately changed the game for popular music.
(09:36):
Here was a pop song that sounded like nothing else
on the radio, complex enough to reward repeated listening, but
catchy enough to get stuck in your head for days.
It shot to number one in both America and England,
staying there for weeks and proving that audiences were hungry
for music that challenged them while still moving their bodies.
(10:00):
The success of Good Vibrations should have been the launching
pad for something even more extraordinary, and in Brian's mind,
it was. The commercial success of Good Vibrations gave Brian
the confidence and credibility to pursue his most ambitious project yet,
an album that would be a musical tour of America,
(10:21):
combining his sophisticated harmonic sensibilities with lyrics that explored American mythology.
Westward expansion, spiritual enlightenment, and the search for meaning in
the modern world. This wasn't just going to be another
Beach Boys album. This was going to be Brian's statement
(10:42):
about the American experience, filtered through his unique understanding of
how music could convey complex ideas and emotions. And that's
where Smile enters the story. The great what if of
popular music history had been working on the concept even
before Pet Sounds was finished, envisioning something that would make
(11:06):
pet Sounds look like a warm up exercise. He was
talking about creating a teenage symphony to God, which sounds
pretentious until you understand that he was serious about both
the symphony and the God parts. This was going to
be music that addressed the biggest questions about existence, consciousness,
(11:30):
and the meaning of American life, all wrapped up in
the most sophisticated pop arrangements ever conceived. Van Dyke Parks,
the collaborator Brian chose for Smile, was himself a musical intellectual,
a classically trained composer who thought in concepts rather than
simple pop formulas. Parks had worked as a session musician
(11:54):
and arranger in Los Angeles, but he was also a
literary type who read voraciously and thought about music in
terms of its relationship to poetry, visual art, and cultural history.
When Brian approached him about writing lyrics for what would
become Smile, Parks saw an opportunity to create something that
(12:18):
would elevate popular music to the level of serious art.
The partnership between Brian and Van Dyke Parks was both
creatively fertile and psychologically volatile. Parks would write lyrics that
were dense with literary references and historical illusions, words that
(12:38):
read like surrealist poetry, but somehow fit perfectly with Brian's
increasingly complex musical arrangements. Brian would create musical settings for
these lyrics that were so intricate they required the band
members to approach their performances with the seriousness of class musicians. Together,
(13:02):
they were creating something that had never existed in popular music,
songs that were simultaneously accessible and intellectual, emotionally direct, and
conceptually sophisticated. The Smile Sessions began in Earnest in late
nineteen sixty six, with Brian and Van Dyke Parks working
on songs that would explore different aspects of American experience,
(13:27):
heroes and Villains was conceived as an epic about the
conquest of the American West, but told from a perspective
that acknowledged both the heroism and the tragedy of westward expansion.
Cabin Essence was meant to be a meditation on rural
American life and the connection between human consciousness and the
(13:50):
natural world. Surf's Up was perhaps the most ambitious piece,
a musical exploration of spiritual awakening that used surfing as
a metaphor for consciousness riding the waves of existence. The
musical arrangements Brian was creating for these songs were more
complex than anything he had ever attempted. Heroes and Villains
(14:13):
went through dozens of different versions, with Brian experimenting with
different instrumental configurations, different vocal arrangements, and different ways of
structuring the song's various sections. He was essentially composing a
musical suite that would tell the story of American expansion
(14:33):
through multiple musical movements, each with its own tempo, key,
and emotional character. But the complexity of the Smile project
was becoming a problem as much as an asset. Brian
was spending months on individual songs, recording hundreds of hours
of material that he couldn't figure out how to assemble
(14:53):
into a coherent album. The modular recording approach that had
worked so well for Good Vibrations was becoming a trap
when applied to an entire album's worth of material. Brian
had created so many musical modules that he couldn't decide
how to fit them together, like a puzzle with too
many pieces. The psychological pressure on Brian during the Smile
(15:16):
sessions was enormous. He was carrying the weight of commercial
expectations following the success of Good Vibrations, dealing with resistance
from his own band members who didn't understand what he
was trying to accomplish, and struggling with mental health issues
that were becoming more severe as the project dragged on.
(15:39):
He was experimenting with psychedelic drugs not just for recreation,
but as creative tools, trying to access altered states of
consciousness that would inform his musical decisions. The other Beach
Boys were becoming increasingly frustrated with Brian's working methods and
the direction the music was taking. Mike Love in particular,
(16:01):
was vocal about his concerns that the band was moving
too far away from the surf rock sound that had
made them famous. He complained that Van Dyke Parks's lyrics
were too intellectual and obscure for the band's audience, and
that Brian's musical arrangements were becoming so complex that they
couldn't be performed live. The tension between Brian's artistic ambitions
(16:23):
and the band's commercial concerns was becoming impossible to ignore.
The record company was also becoming impatient with the pace
of the Smile Sessions and the mounting costs of the project.
Brian was spending unprecedented amounts of money on studio time,
session musicians, and experimental recording techniques, all without producing a
(16:46):
finished album that could be released and marketed. The executives
at Capitol Records were beginning to question whether Brian's artistic
vision was worth the financial investment, especially when the band's
previous album, Pet Sounds had been commercially disappointing in the
American market. The breaking point came in early nineteen sixty seven,
(17:07):
when Brian became convinced that the Smile Sessions were somehow
cursed or connected to negative spiritual forces. He had been
working on a piece called Missus O'Leary's Cow, which was
meant to musically depict the Great Chicago Fire. When he
heard reports of fires breaking out in Los Angeles. In
his increasingly paranoid state, Brian became convinced that his music
(17:32):
was somehow causing these fires, and he ordered the Missus
O'Leary's Cow tapes to be destroyed. This incident has become
legendary in rock history as an example of how Brian's
mental health struggles were beginning to interfere with his creative process.
The Smile project was officially shelved in May nineteen sixty seven,
(17:54):
leaving behind a vast archive of unfinished musical material and
unfulfilled artistic ambition. Brian had created what many considered to
be some of the most beautiful and sophisticated music ever
recorded for a popular album, but he couldn't figure out
how to assemble it into a coherent hole. The failure
(18:14):
of Smile to reach completion was a tragedy not just
for Brian Wilson, but for popular music as a whole,
because it represented the collapse of the most ambitious artistic
project of the rock era. The impact of the Smile
failure on Brian's psychology was devastating. He had poured everything
(18:35):
he had into the project, pushing himself to creative heights
that may have been unsustainable for any human being. When
he couldn't complete the album, he took it as evidence
of his own failure as an artist, and he began
to withdraw from the creative process that had defined his
identity since childhood. The man who had created Pet Sounds
(18:58):
and Good Vibrations began to doubt his own nobilities and
to question whether his artistic vision was worth the psychological cost.
The other Beach Boys were left to pick up the
pieces of a project they had never fully understood or supported.
They cobbled together an album called Smiley Smile from some
(19:18):
of the simpler Smile material, but it was a pale
shadow of what Brian had originally envisioned. The band's creative momentum,
which had been building since the early nineteen sixties, was
essentially broken by the Smile experience, and they would never
again achieve the artistic heights of the Pet Sounds period.
(19:40):
The story of Good Vibrations and Smile is ultimately a
story about the collision between artistic ambition and human limitations.
Brian Wilson had pushed popular music to places it had
never been before, creating songs that were simultaneously intellectually sophisticated
(20:01):
and emotionally direct. But the psychological cost of that creativity
was enormous, and it ultimately proved to be more than
he could sustain. The failure of Smile to reach completion
represents one of the great what ifs of music history.
What might have happened if Brian had been able to
(20:23):
complete his vision for a musical exploration of American consciousness.
But even in failure, the Smile Sessions produced music that
would influence artists for decades to come. Songs like Surf's
Up and Heroes and Villains would eventually be released in
various forms, and they would be recognized as masterpieces of
(20:46):
sophisticated pop composition. The harmonic techniques Brian developed during the
Smile Sessions would influence everyone from the Beatles to contemporary
indie rock bands. The modular recording approach he pioneered would
become standard practice in popular music production. The tragedy of
Smile wasn't just that it was never completed in Brian's
(21:09):
original vision. The tragedy was that its failure marked the
end of an era when popular music was pushing toward
ever greater levels of artistic sophistication. After Smile, the music
industry would become more conservative, more focused on commercial formulas,
and less willing to support the kind of experimental work
(21:32):
that Brian had been doing. The failure of Smile sent
a message to the industry that there were limits to
how far popular music could be pushed, and that message
would influence the way music was made and marketed for
decades to come. In our next episode, we'll explore how
the failure of Smile affected the internal dynamics of the
(21:56):
Beach Boys, leading to conflicts and personal struggles that would
define the band's story for the rest of their career.
We'll examine the individual tragedies that befell the band members,
the legal battles that would consume them for decades, and
the way they struggled to maintain their identity as artists
in the wake of their greatest creative triumph and failure.
(22:19):
Thanks for listening, Please subscribe and remember this episode was
brought to you by Quiet Please Podcast Networks. For more
content like this, please go to Quiet Please dot AI.
Until next time, keep those needles in the groove, and
remember sometimes the greatest art comes from the beautiful ruins
(22:40):
of impossible dreams. Quiet, please dot Ai hear what matters.
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