Word: beachings
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...performance of Smile itself (and other Beach Boys hits, including one from Pet Sounds) was more equivocal than the concert’s sloganeering: Brian Wilson is clearly a more constrained musician than he once was. Where the Smile album succeeded in cloaking Wilson’s vocal limitations behind other singers and an excellent production, the live show necessarily did not. He ran out of breath during “Surf’s Up.” He was flat during “Vegetables.” Often, he simply delegated lyrics...
...mythology. It is unlikely that any version of Wilson’s work—bootleg, official recording or live performance—will be evaluated separate from its surrounding narratives. Indeed, the Brian Wilson legend is at least as responsible as his music for maintaining his and the Beach Boys’ permanent respectability at the frontiers of pop music—frontiers of which Wilson himself has no knowledge...
...unclear how Smile will come to be regarded with respect to the Beach Boys’ Sgt. Pepper, Pet Sounds, or even with what it could have been had Wilson finished it in 1967. One potential conclusion is that no completed album could redeem the mystique of the Smile bootlegs...
...before he tripped off the face of the planet. I’ve chosen to narrow my focus to an album that never quite made it, and a man who was psychologically destroyed in the process, joining Mr. Barrett as poster boys for 60s burnouts. My choice is the Beach Boys’ Smile, Brian Wilson’s long-deferred masterpiece, intended to top the sublime Pet Sounds and to render the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper obsolete before it hit the shelves. This album’s failure to appear reflects almost too perfectly the abortive and tragically...
...Brian Wilson was rich, famous, supremely talented and 23 years old. He already had crafted ten successful albums. Pet Sounds had broken new ground in pop songwriting and production and stunned Paul McCartney, who has since called it the greatest album of all time. The Beach Boys’ first million-selling single, “Good Vibrations,” followed, a song whose innovative recording technique and fresh sound threatened to knock the Beatles from the pinnacle of the rock scene. The wild response to “Good Vibrations” propelled Wilson into his newest project...