Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys’ co-founder, passed away at 82, his family announced on June 11. As the band’s songwriter and co-lead vocalist, Wilson developed the group’s signature sound, from early surf tunes to the experimental and influential 1966 album, Pet Sounds.
Mental health challenges impacted Wilson’s work on Smile, the Beach Boys’ uncompleted follow-up to Pet Sounds, which they began recording in 1966. Wilson believed it would be his best work, but Smile wasn’t released until almost 40 years later.
The complex history of Smile is explained here, highlighting how it solidified Wilson’s legacy.
Smile’s not-so-good vibrations
Wilson described Smile, the successor to Pet Sounds, as a “teenage symphony to God.” He experimented with tracks like “Brian Falls Into a Microphone,” “Love To Say Dada,” and “Do You Like Worms.”
During the creative process, Wilson isolated himself, even having eight truckloads of sand dumped around his piano to inspire him, according to the New York Times. The project became increasingly mysterious, especially after Wilson canceled the album’s release in 1967. The Times called it “the most famous unheard album in pop history.”
In 1967, the Beach Boys released a simpler version of Smile called Smiley Smile. TIME’s Jay Cocks wrote in 1993 that this album “nearly undone” the band and marked the beginning of their commercial decline.
Reaction to Smile
The Smile sessions weren’t entirely unproductive. Over time, some of Wilson’s work on Smile appeared in Beach Boys hits such as “Good Vibrations,” “Heroes and Villains,” “Surf’s Up,” “Cabin Essence,” and “Wind Chimes.” The unfinished work received praise. Cocks described Wilson’s recordings for Smile, included in a Good Vibrations box set, as “unfinished, incomplete and glorious,” noting, “The music is mystic, mad, wild and gentle, quite unlike anything anyone, including Wilson, had ever tried in before.”
He added, “The lyrics were as fleeting as a waking dream; the musical tracks were layered as if Wilson were a kid in his room stacking 45-r.p.m. records on top of one another. The songs that resulted seem random at first, off-beam and crazy, but they haunt.”
TIME’s Bruce Handy also wrote about discovering a CD of unfinished Smile tracks: “I love this CD. I love its raw beauty, but even more, I love its wasted promise. (This is a boy example; girls can substitute ‘s burned journals.) I also love the illicit access to Wilson’s half-finished thoughts, to Wilson himself.”
Wilson completed Smile in 2004, and it was “rapturously received,” TIME noted in a 2008 list naming it one of the 10 best comeback albums.
He told the New York Times that year, “It was finally ready to be finished, ready to be accepted.” Wilson felt that the mid-1960s weren’t the right time for its release, explaining, “We think people are now ready to understand where it was coming from. Back then, no one was ready for it.”
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