Smile (The Beach Boys album)
Smile is an unfinished album by the American rock band the Beach Boys, conceived as the follow-up to their 1966 album Pet Sounds. The project—a concept album involving themes of Americana, humor, youth, innocence, and the natural world—was planned as a twelve-track LP assembled from modular fragments, the same editing process used on their single "Good Vibrations". After a year of recording, the album was shelved and a downscaled version, Smiley Smile, was released in September 1967. The original project came to be regarded as the most legendary unreleased album in popular music history.
The album was produced and primarily composed by Brian Wilson with guest lyricist and assistant arranger Van Dyke Parks, together envisioning the project as a Rhapsody in Blue–influenced riposte to contemporary rock trends and the British Invasion. Wilson touted Smile as a "teenage symphony to God", intended to surpass Pet Sounds and inaugurate the band's Brother Records imprint. Consuming over 50 hours of tape across more than 80 recording sessions, its content ranged from musical and spoken word to sound effects and role-playing. Its influences spanned mysticism, classical music, ragtime, pre–rock and roll pop, jazz, doo-wop, musique concrète, and cartoons. Planned elements included word paintings, tape manipulation, acoustic experiments, comedic interludes, and the band's most challenging and complex vocals to this point. The projected lead singles were "Heroes and Villains", about early California history, and "Vega-Tables", a satirical promotion of organic food.
Numerous issues, including legal entanglements with Capitol Records, Wilson's uncompromising perfectionism and mental instabilities, as well as Parks' withdrawal from the project in early 1967, delayed the album. Most tracks were produced between August and December 1966, but few were finished, and its structure was never finalized. Fearing the public's reaction, Wilson blocked its release. A mythology bolstered by journalists present at the sessions soon surrounded the project. Long the subject of debate and speculation over its tracks and sequencing, Wilson's unfulfilled ambitions inspired many musicians and groups, especially those in indie rock, post-punk, electronic, and chamber pop genres.
Smile was reported to be half-finished before pared-down versions of six tracks were issued on Smiley Smile; further material was reworked into new songs such as "Cool, Cool Water". From 1968 to 1971, three additional tracks—"Our Prayer", "Cabinessence" and "Surf's Up"—were completed by the band. Since the 1980s, extensive session recordings have circulated widely on bootlegs, allowing fans to assemble hypothetical versions of a finished album, adding to its legacy as an interactive project. In 2004, Wilson, Parks, and Darian Sahanaja rearranged Smile for live performances, billed as Brian Wilson Presents Smile, which Wilson later adapted into a solo album. He considered this version to be substantially different from his original vision. The 2011 compilation The Smile Sessions included the first official approximation of the Beach Boys' completed album and received universal acclaim.
Background
By 1965, having withdrawn from concert tours, Wilson had distanced himself from his bandmates and networked further within the Los Angeles music scene while increasingly using drugs such as marijuana, LSD, and Desbutal. He forged a close relationship with Loren Schwartz, an aspiring talent agent, and sought to make the Beach Boys' eleventh album, Pet Sounds, a clear departure from previous releases. He opted not to work with his usual lyricist, bandmate Mike Love, and instead collaborated mainly with jingle writer Tony Asher, at Schwartz's recommendation. In December of that year, Byrds member David Crosby introduced Wilson to Van Dyke Parks, a songwriter, arranger, session musician, and former child actor who had relocated to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to play in local folk revival scenes.File:At the pet sounds studio 1966.jpg|thumb|left|From left: Bruce Johnston, Terry Melcher, Tony Asher, and Brian Wilson at a Pet Sounds recording session in early 1966.
On February 17, 1966, Wilson began recording "Good Vibrations", first intended for Pet Sounds but later excluded due to his dissatisfaction with the initial recording, experimenting with several arrangements until April. On May 4, during the fourth session for "Good Vibrations", he began recording the track in sections rather than as one continuous performance, intending to splice the segments together later. Through 1966, Parks briefly signed with MGM Records, who released his first two singles, and played on albums by the Byrds and other acts, after which his activity centered on select Warner Bros. pop groups.
Through Parks or Bruce Johnston, Wilson was introduced to former Beatles press officer Derek Taylor, soon recruited as the Beach Boys' publicist and initiator of a promotional campaign that branded Wilson as a pop "genius". Pet Sounds was released on May 16 and immediately became a landmark album for its sophisticated orchestral arrangements and its role in positioning the Beach Boys among top rock innovators. In the U.S., the album confused their fans and sold worse than previous Beach Boys releases, whereas the British embraced it warmly. This UK success encouraged Wilson to take greater creative risks and convinced Capitol Records to support his next ambitious project.
Collaboration and surrounding milieu
In mid-July 1966, Wilson reconnected with Parks at a house party hosted by Byrds producer and Johnston collaborator Terry Melcher. Impressed by his articulate manner, Wilson, seeking a new lyricist, later offered him a collaboration on the Beach Boys' next album. Between July and September, the pair composed numerous songs at Wilson's Beverly Hills home. Originally titled Dumb Angel, the project was retitled to Smile by September, and writing sessions continued throughout October and November. They usually worked late at night to suit Wilson’s schedule; Parks remained on call for writing sessions and, as the project intensified, he and his wife Durrie often slept at Wilson’s house.Like Asher, Parks had limited experience in lyric writing, and Wilson was largely unaware of his collaborator's musical background. Wilson recalled that their writing sessions typically began with a rhythm pattern from Parks, which he would then develop into a melody before Parks immediately drafted lyrics. Wilson rarely altered a word. According to Durrie, "It was fairly evenly balanced. Brian was very deferential to Van Dyke. He never gave up his own point of view and neither did Van Dyke, and I think that’s why the collaboration was so strong." Wilson credited him with inspiring "me to come up with new licks and new melodic ideas". Parks occasionally performed on Smile recordings but stated that he did not originate any musical material and played only when directed.
Their collaboration was increasingly influenced by Wilson’s expanding social circle, a group he regularly solicited for feedback. Biographer Steven Gaines characterized Wilson's circle as a mix of both exploitative individuals and those who were "talented" and "industrious". This included MGM talent scout David Anderle and his client, singer Danny Hutton, who had performed with Parks; Hutton later introduced Parks to Anderle, who soon became his manager. Michael Vosse, a magazine reporter and college friend of Anderle, was introduced to Wilson by Parks and tasked by Taylor to interview him for the forthcoming release of "Good Vibrations". The day after their meeting, Wilson called Vosse and offered him a job recording natural sounds. Many of these individuals, later dubbed "the Vosse Posse" by Beach Boys fans, became regulars at Wilson's home and during studio sessions. Turtles singer Mark Volman, who was also introduced to Wilson by Hutton, later remarked that his association had felt akin to being a "groupie for Brian".
Journalists were similarly integrated into this milieu. Paul Jay Robbins, from the Los Angeles Free Press and a New Left political activist involved in the 1966 Sunset Strip curfew riots, met Parks at Byrds concerts, which led to his inclusion in Wilson's circle. Paul Williams, the 18-year-old founder and editor of Crawdaddy!, expressed admiration for Pet Sounds and "Good Vibrations", and subsequently visited Wilson at his home at Christmas 1966 before returning to New York. Jules Siegel, from The Saturday Evening Post, was introduced to Wilson by Anderle and accompanied him at his home and in the studio for two months. Richard Goldstein, the first rock critic from The Village Voice, and Lawrence Dietz, from New York magazine, was also among those involved.
Anderle said, "Smile was going to be a monument. That's the way we talked about it, as a monument." Journalist Nick Kent, writing in 1975, believed that the reliability of figures such as Anderle, Siegel, and Vosse had been compromised by claims "so lavish one can be forgiven, if only momentarily, for believing that Brian Wilson had, at that time orbited out to the furthermost reaches of the celestial stratosphere for the duration of this starcrossed project." Gaines, in 1986, acknowledged that the "events surrounding the album" varied so greatly by individual perspective that the facts remain uncertain, while Williams stated that he, Wilson, Anderle, Parks, Taylor, and other journalists were "very stoned", which may have affected their perception of events.
Inspiration and scope
Wilson originally planned several projects—including a sound effects collage, a comedy album, and a "health food" album—but Capitol's lack of support for these ideas spurred the Beach Boys to form their own label, Brother Records. Anderle stated that it was "important" to recognize that the Smile recordings defied any attempt at consolidation, as Wilson's ideas ranged from concepts for an elemental-themed suite to "humor albums", originally separate from Smile, which was intended as "the culmination of all of intellectual occupations". Hutton disputed the notion that Wilson had a fully formed album in mind, stating, "I think he created all this music at a certain period, and if it had been all packaged at the time, it would have been called SMiLE... But I never heard him say, 'My next album is going to be called SMiLE'." Journalist Tom Nolan, present at the sessions, later reported that Wilson's expansive ideas included an album constructed from "sound effects" with "chords spliced together through a whole LP". Nolan further observed that when Wilson briefly turned his attention to films, it appeared he could "capture more" in his art, explaining, "If you couldn't get a sound from a carrot, you could show a carrot. He would really liked to have made music that was a carrot."Smile was conceived to be explicitly American in style and subject matter, a deliberate riposte to the British influences that dominated contemporary rock music. Wilson said that he had aimed to "Americanize" both early and mid-America, much as George Gershwin "Americanized" jazz and classical music. According to Parks, Gershwin's 1924 composition Rhapsody in Blue encapsulated a "musical kaleidoscope" of America, a quality that both he and Wilson sought to emulate. He explained that they "wanted to investigate American images" and slang, deliberately taking a "gauche route" to counter the era's pervasive British fixation. Many artists had adopted British inflections to mimic the Beatles' style; in Parks' description, Wilson faced no other alternative but to combat these developments, as he was effectively "the last man standing".
Numerous authors state that Wilson intended Smile as a response to the Beatles' August 1966 release Revolver. Parks recalled Wilson afforded little attention to the Beatles' concurrent output and "was more taken by Beatlemania| mania". In a 2004 interview, Wilson mentioned that while the 1965 album Rubber Soul had inspired his artistic ambitions with Pet Sounds, Smile was meant to be "something more advanced" than pop music and incomparable to the Beatles.
File:Arthur Koestler.jpg|thumb|left|upright=0.7|Wilson stated that his understanding of ego and humor drew on the writings of Arthur Koestler
The project was also inspired by Wilson's growing interest in subjects such as astrology, numerology and the occult. His library reportedly included works spanning poetry, prose, and cultural criticism—such as Arthur Koestler's The Act of Creation, which he frequently cited—alongside texts on non-Christian belief systems such as Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Subud. These works promoted practices like meditation and vegetarianism, in which Wilson took interest. Wilson, in 2005, described his engagement with metaphysics as "crucial" and The Act of Creation as pivotal: "It turned me on to very special things people attach their egos to their sense of humor before anything else." Vosse recalled Wilson stating that "laughter was one of the highest forms of divinity" and that he had intended to create "a humor album"; Vosse later surmised that Smile would have manifested as a "sophisticated" Southern California-inspired gospel album, reflecting Wilson's "own form of revival music."
Jules Siegel recalled Wilson, during one evening in October 1966, announcing to friends his intent to create a "teenage symphony to God", also describing a shift toward a "white spiritual sound" he believed would define music's future. Wilson cited the Beatles' latest work as part of a broader "religious" movement in music, stating, "That's where I'm going. It's going to scare a lot of people." That November, Nolan reported Wilson's artistic shift stemmed from a prior psychedelic experience, though Wilson later stated he would not take LSD again. Asked about music's trajectory, Wilson predicted "White spirituals Songs of faith."
Wilson said that the album's original working title, Dumb Angel, was discarded after the group opted for a "more cheery" alternative. His brother Carl explained in early 1967 that the final title, Smile, had reflected the band's focus on spirituality and "spreading goodwill, good thoughts and happiness".