Apparently listening to The Beatles’ Rubber Soul convinced Brian Wilson that you could do a whole album of good songs. What a revolutionary concept! I wonder if it was the American version of Rubber Soul with harder rocking songs removed and I’ve Just Seen A Face and It’s Only Love added by Capitol in an attempt to make this seem like a “folk rock” album. That would be ironic.

Unfortunately Brian was going to need some extra time to try putting together something that was good from top to bottom, so he bought himself some time by throwing together a quickie Party! album of quick acoustic covers of random songs with some chatting and other noises overdubbed on top to give the feeling of “audio verité” from an actual party. What nobody expected was that DJs would turn the last track, Barbara Ann, into a hit forcing the band to release it as a single and play it as an encore at pretty much every concert. It’s particularly bittersweet since none of the Beach Boys actually sang lead on the track. It’s actually an uncredited Dean Torrence of Jan & Dean.

Still it did the trick and Capitol satiated long enough for Brian to hunker down and record his masterpiece. First he was going need a new lyricist. Since he needed someone who was good at translating his client’s needs and desires and making them succinct yet effective, Brian actually ended up hiring ad man Tony Asher for the job. While the rest of the band was on tour in Japan, he and the Wrecking Crew worked over the slavish and complex arrangements for the songs. Once the band was back in town, Brian put them through their paces getting their vocals down on tape just exactly right.

The hard work paid off… at least in some respects. The resultant album was widely heralded at the time and is still considered one of the best albums ever. This won Brian a lot more acolytes and accolades from the drug-taking, groovy hippy community. Unfortunately, it also did not perform as well as the last few Beach Boys albums, earning him some skepticism, not only from the record company, but also the rest of the band.

I put 11 of the 13 tracks on this playlist, because really it is a whole unique sound different from everything that came before and everything that came after. I just left off the instrumentals, as they are not nearly as interesting or as important. Hey, I had to cut something.

While some were worried that Brian was getting too esoteric and out-of-touch with the common man, his next single was going to prove that he still had what it took to make hits. At least for now. Started during the Pet Sounds but not finished until sometime later, Good Vibrations became one of the band’s biggest singles. It was also one of the most expensive singles ever recorded at the time, and featured a truly experimental recording technique, where Brian would only record parts of the song at one time, moving to different studios to get different types of sounds for the various sections. While these days it easy to overlook what a truly weird and complex song it is, because it has become so ubiquitous, it is really a strange record.

But it is a strange record that sold a lot of copies, so Brian was allowed to take this modular recording technique and apply it to a whole album that was going to be called SMiLE. There are reams and reams of legends and stories and facts and misinformation surrounding the album, but ultimately it wasn’t finished at the time. But over time, whether on bootlegs or subsequent album, the songs were leaked out to the public showing just how beautiful, if overly ambitious, SMiLE would have been.

There’s tons of speculation and conjecture about what would and would not have been on the album. Since the recording process took nearly a year from inception to it’s final disintegration, answering that question depends a lot on when you are talking about. The late 1966 SMiLE would’ve been much different from the mid-1967 SMiLE. And it’s not just which songs, but which versions of which songs would end up where. Lots of little bit and pieces were recorded and no one was taking very thorough or comprehensive notes. Brian changed his mind a lot too. Bits initially written and recorded for one song would later be repurposed for a different song. It is a mess. A fascinating, intriguing mess. And I will say that when Brian finally did finish the work in 2004, it was somewhat disappointing that we didn’t have the mystery still so we could play infinitely with the puzzle pieces.

What I have included on here are some of the songs that are the most complete and certain that would’ve been on the album. Good Vibrations definitely would be on there, even though Brian didn’t really think of it as part of the project. Capitol needed a big hit to sell this weird album and even included it on the cover for the album. The a capella Our Prayer was mentioned as being the prelude or introduction to the album, so most SMiLE mixes start there. Wonderful, Vegatables, and Wind Chimes were re-recorded for the next album, Smiley Smile, so they seem like a safe bet.

Also included in both SMiLE and Smiley Smiley is Heroes & Villains. Which should be simple enough to add, but the question because which version of the song. Not that there are really that many different takes, per se. It just that a lot of the little snippets and bits floating around have, at one time or another, been considered part of Heroes & Villains. There’s the more streamlined version that was eventually released as a single. There’s the “Cantina” mix that swaps out a few parts. There are versions ranging from 3 to 7 minutes long. There’s even a 2-part version that may have been considered for both the A and B side of a single at one point. I went with a pretty standard, middle-of-the-road edit of the song for this playlist, although if I were compiling my own personal SMiLE set list I may be attempted to include something a bit longer and more adventurous.

The myth of SMiLE was so great that the Beach Boys would often have to pay homage to it in an attempt to boost sales of other wise forgettable albums. In 1969, they took the rough tracks for Cabinessence and put it on the album 20/20. There was even less completed for the song Surf’s Up, but the Beach Boys cobbled something together in 1972 and named their latest album after it.

Other than these well known songs there’s lots of flotsam and jetsam floating around in the SMiLE stream. Some are thirty second little tidbits like I’m In Great Shape or Barnyard. Others are instrumentals like Do You Dig Worms? or I Love To Say Da-Da. There were instrumentals on Pet Sounds, so it is possible that they would’ve been put on the album as is, although the 2004 Brian Wilson Presents Smile has lyrics and vocals added to almost all of them. The only one that doesn’t have new words is Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow, although there are some backing vocals. This song was supposed to represent “Fire” in the Elements Suite. What other songs were in the Elements Suite? No one’s really sure.

I had to include this one instrumental track as it has some stories attached to it. At the time of recording, Brian made the musicians wear fire helmets and there was even a small fire set in a trash can so the smell could inform the playing. Later that even Brian discovered there was a coincidental rash of fires around Los Angeles that broke out while they were recording. Brian feared that his song may have been in some way responsible for these fires and determined to have the tapes destroyed (possibly even burned). But clearly he didn’t actually go through with it. Maybe someone told him they were, but were lying. Who knows? The track eventually resurfaced – and it is pretty spooky.

Still with no support from his band mates and frustrations from the record company, eventually the SMiLE project was trashed. Nobody was really sure that such a weird, experimental, psychedelic album would sell. And then a week after it was announced that the album would not happen, Sgt. Pepper was released. Now everyone was scrambling to make their version of Their Satanic Majesties Request, while Brian was burned out and in no mood to try and create (or finish) anything so massive and complicated. So things got simpler, but somehow even weirder, next week…