I suppose it makes sense to start off with what you might call “my” SMiLE story.
Looking back with the advantage – is advancing age ever really an advantage? – of half a century’s experience, I can see that there are two events, decades apart, that cast long shadows over my lifelong fascination with the SMiLE album.
The first one took place in 1967. Just to be clear, I was too young, strictly speaking, to live the 60s music scene. But I was lucky. My brother, ten years my senior, was working in the music business. So I got to experience it through him, in my own derivative, second-hand way.
He was a gifted songwriter and guitarist, and he also did a little bit of producing on the side. At one point he was managing and producing a sort of psychedelic guitar-jam band – I forget the name – and writing songs for them. I do recall one of the song titles, and it’s pure 60s: “Wines of Times Less Strange.” (I remember it, vaguely, as sounding something like the Doors’ “Waiting for the Sun.”) He had an acetate recording of that one; I’d give a lot to have it now.
He was also writing songs for a music company in Manhattan; I think of it as a kind of Brill Building setup, with staff writers churning out melodies and lyrics, banging away on upright pianos, but that might be a pure fantasy. In any case, he was a lyrics guy, and he was teamed with a music guy. They turned out one song that became a minor hit for one of the mid-level acoustic-rock bands. The funny thing is, his real name didn’t show up anywhere. I believe the company used “house” name pseudonyms for their writers, so that’s how the song was credited. (There was nothing unusual or shady about the practice, and I know he received modest royalty checks for years.) That same pseudonym must have been assigned, on a more permanent basis, to a subsequent writer; because there were a couple of albums released, years later, by an artist using that name. Or maybe that was this other guy’s real name, and the music company lent it out to my brother. Who knows? The 60s – to say the least – were confusing.
Anyway, that’s all beside the point, although it might provide some context. Because my brother was in the business, I was precociously aware of new bands and albums as they appeared. We would both sit and listen to the LPs he would bring home. I remember releases from the stars and the obscurities alike: everything from Between the Buttons to Fusion, by the Hello People. He would also bring home copies of the music-related magazines of the day (there were a lot of those).
He was leafing through one of those magazines when he had an uncharacteristic outburst and threw it down on the table. I was just a kid, so I wasn’t sure exactly what was happening, or which emotions were in play. Anger? Outrage? Disgust?
I asked him what was going on, and he said something along the lines of “It’s not coming out!” (I don’t claim to remember the exact words.) I went on to ask him what “it” was, and he told me that the next Beach Boys record, an album called SMiLE, had been canceled. I know, now, that he was reacting to Derek Taylor’s May announcement that the album had been “scrapped.”
Given his reaction, that was obviously a big deal, a huge letdown. I wasn’t sure why. I had never seen him take a piece of music news so personally. I didn’t know why this specific album mattered so much; I mean, this was the height of the 60s, and great singles and albums were being released every second. If it wasn’t the Beatles, it was the Byrds, or the Temptations, or Buffalo Springfield, or somebody else. That’s just the way it was; if you weren’t thrilled with this week’s releases, just wait a few days, and something else would be coming along. We assumed, without thinking too hard about it, that the river of amazing music would flow on forever.
An aside: sometimes I think the Elizabethan drama scene must have been similar, in some ways, to the 60s music scene. Shakespeare this month, Marlowe next month, Jonson the month after. A riotous explosion of creativity, coming at you from every direction. Where the Elizabethan playwrights experimented with language, the 60s bands experimented with both language and music. I wonder if the theatergoers of that age also took the phenomenon for granted, and figured it would go on for eternity.
I didn’t ask my brother any followup questions; he didn’t seem eager to discuss the matter. But for some reason, the memory of that moment, surprisingly clear and vivid, has stayed with me through the years.
Now you have to understand that the U.S. musical landscape of the 60s was a fragmented one, with lots of independent principalities warring with each other. There was the New York music scene, the Boston music scene, the Detroit music scene…you get the idea. My brother was a New York music person; he didn’t have any contact with his counterparts out in Los Angeles. Oh, I’m sure if you had played out the six-degrees game, you would have discovered that he might have shared a studio session with an engineer who had done some work out in California. But that would have been as far as it went.
So for him to get that upset about the cancellation of the next Beach Boys album? In later years I came to realize the implications of that fact. It meant that he knew that album was going to be something remarkable, and that its non-appearance was a significant loss. And it meant something more: that anticipation of the release had permeated the entire music world, quite literally from coast to coast. He didn’t know anyone who was involved with the album, but he knew, nevertheless, that it was going to be a breakthrough record, an important record. Did he pick that up from magazine articles? From whispers in the music community? Both, probably. One way or another, he knew that Brian Wilson was doing something amazing out there in California, and he was bitterly disappointed that he wasn’t going to get to hear it.
(I will also mention here, without dwelling on the point, that his reaction to the substitute Smiley Smile album, when it was released, was thoroughly unprintable. Revisionist critics have attempted to rehabilitate its reputation; I’m not a member of that group.)
to be continued...
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