Smile (Beach Boys album)

Smile is an unfinished album by the American rock band the Beach Boys that was planned to follow their 11th studio album Pet Sounds. It was to be a twelve-track concept LP assembled from short, interchangeable musical fragments similar to the group's 1966 single "Good Vibrations". Instead, the album was shelved and the group released a downscaled version, Smiley Smile, in September 1967. Over the next four decades, few of the original Smile tracks were officially released, and the project came to be regarded as the most "legendary" unreleased album in popular music history.
The album was produced and almost entirely composed by Brian Wilson with guest lyricist Van Dyke Parks, both of whom conceived the project as a riposte to the British sensibilities that had dominated popular music of the era. Wilson touted Smile as a "teenage symphony to God" to surpass Pet Sounds. It was planned to feature word paintings, tape manipulation, elaborate vocal arrangements, experiments with musical acoustics, and comedic interludes, with influences drawn from psychedelia, pre-rock and roll pop, doo-wop, jazz, ragtime, musique concrète, classical, American history, poetry, cartoons, and mysticism. The lead single would have been "Heroes and Villains", a Western musical comedy, or "Vega-Tables", a satire of physical fitness.
Numerous issues prevented the album's completion and release, including legal entanglements with Capitol Records, Wilson's undiagnosed schizoaffective disorder, and Parks' resignation from the project. Most of the backing tracks were produced between August and December 1966, but few vocals were ever recorded, and the album's structure was never finalized. Traumatized by the difficult recording sessions, Wilson blocked attempts to complete Smile in the subsequent decades. After the 1980s, bootlegged tracks circulated widely, allowing fans to assemble their own hypothetical versions of a finished Smile album. The project's unfulfilled potential inspired many musicians, particularly those in indie rock, post-punk, and chamber pop genres, and the malleability of the recordings led some commentators to refer to it as the first ever "interactive" album.
In 2004, Wilson, Parks, and Darian Sahanaja arranged a version of Smile for concert performances, titled Brian Wilson Presents Smile, which Wilson then adapted into a solo album. He stated that this version differed substantially from his original vision. The 1993 box set included the first authorized compilation of the Beach Boys' Smile, with the sequencing ordered by Mark Linett, Andy Paley, and David Leaf. In 2011, it was succeeded by The Smile Sessions, a project led by Linett, Alan Boyd, and Dennis Wolfe with Wilson's cooperation. It received universal acclaim and won Best Historical Album at the 55th Grammy Awards.

Background

In late 1964, as Brian Wilson's industry profile grew, he became acquainted with various individuals from around the Los Angeles music scene. He also took an increasing interest in recreational drugs. According to his then-wife Marilyn, Wilson's new friends "had the gift of gab... All of a sudden was in Hollywood—these people talk a language that was fascinating to him. Anybody that was different and talked cosmic or whatever....he liked it." Wilson's closest friend in this period was Loren Schwartz, an aspiring talent agent that he met at a recording studio. Schwartz introduced Wilson to marijuana and LSD, as well as a wealth of literature commonly read by college students. During his first LSD trip, Wilson had what he considered to be "a very religious experience" and claimed to have seen God.
, where Wilson took residence in October 1965
In November 1965, early in the sessions for the Beach Boys' 11th studio LP Pet Sounds, Wilson began experimenting with the idea of recording an album focused on humor and laughter. He was interested in making Pet Sounds a complete departure from previous Beach Boys releases and did not wish to work with his usual lyricist, Mike Love. Instead, he worked with jingle writer Tony Asher on most of the album's songs. On February 17, 1966, Wilson began tracking their song "Good Vibrations", which was intended for Pet Sounds but omitted due to Wilson's dissatisfaction with the recording. He attempted a few different arrangements of the track from then until April. Starting with the sixth session, held on May 4, he began recording "Good Vibrations" in sections, rather than tracking the full piece all the way through, with the intention of later splicing the fragments into a composite track.
In March, the Beach Boys hired accountant Nick Grillo as their personal manager following a move from Cummins & Currant to Julius Lefkowitz & Company. The band also recruited Derek Taylor, former press officer for the Beatles, as their publicist. Taylor said he was hired to take the band to "a new plateau", and to that end, he invented the tagline "Brian Wilson is a genius". Wilson stated at the time that he "wanted to write with more than one level. Eventually, I would like to see longer singles—so that the song can be more meaningful. A song can, for instance, have movements—in the same way as a classical concerto—only capsulized."
Released on May 16, Pet Sounds was massively influential, containing lush and sophisticated orchestral arrangements that raised the band's prestige to the top level of rock innovators. In the US, the album confused their fans and sold worse than previous Beach Boys releases, but in the UK, the reception was highly favorable. The UK success emboldened Wilson to take greater creative risks and helped convince the band's label, Capitol Records, to fund and promote his next project, however ambitious it may be.

Writing sessions

Collaboration with Parks

In 1966, Wilson attended a party held at the home of the Byrds' record producer Terry Melcher. There, he was introduced to Van Dyke Parks, a 23-year-old professional songwriter, arranger, session musician, and former child actor. Parks had moved to Los Angeles a few years earlier, hoping to compose the scores to Disney films, but instead lent his services to the Byrds and MGM pop groups the Mojo Men and Harper's Bizarre. During this meeting, Wilson noticed that Parks had an unusually articulate manner of speaking. Wilson had been searching for a new lyricist, and soon after, approached Parks with the offer to write lyrics for the Beach Boys' next album. Parks had worries, having heard that Asher had dissociated himself from Wilson and the Beach Boys, but nonetheless agreed to collaborate.
Between May and September, Wilson and Parks wrote many songs together at Wilson's Beverly Hills home for the upcoming project, tentatively called Dumb Angel. Aside from playing on some of the Smile recording dates, Parks' contributions were limited to writing words to Wilson's melodies. He said: "I had no input whatsoever in the music. I was a total lyricist and sometimes an instrumentalist." Like Asher, Parks had minimal experience as a lyricist, and Wilson had little prior knowledge of his collaborator's musical background.
Parks implied in various interviews that he and Wilson shared an understanding of the album's Americana thematic, but in 2005, he wrote a response to a New York Review of Books article that stated otherwise. In a 2004 article, journalist Geoffrey Himes stated that although Parks did not write any of the music, he did collaborate with Wilson on the arrangements.

Atmosphere and Wilson's associates

Wilson continued to involve more people in his social, business, and creative affairs. As biographer Steven Gaines wrote, the circle soon "enlarged to encompass a whole new crowd. Some of these people were 'drainers', were talented and industrious". Parks said that, eventually, "it wasn't just Brian and me in a room; it was Brian and me... and all kinds of self-interested people pulling him in various directions." During the Smile era, Wilson's coterie included:

David Anderle, an MGM Records talent scout who was nicknamed "the mayor of hip". He initially met Wilson in 1965 through a family member. Gaines credits Anderle as the primary conduit between Wilson and the "hip" associates surrounding him.
Danny Hutton, a singer that Parks had performed with at The Troubador in 1964. He and Wilson first met in late 1964; they became further acquainted after being reintroduced by Hutton's manager, Anderle, in late 1965. Hutton also introduced Parks to Anderle, who soon became Parks' manager as well. Hutton later became famous as a member of Three Dog Night.
Michael Vosse, a former television production assistant who had been friends with Anderle in college. Vosse acted as a liaiser between record companies, musicians, other artists, and "the underground". Derek Taylor arranged for Vosse, then a magazine reporter, to interview Wilson for the forthcoming release of "Good Vibrations". The day after their meeting, Wilson called Vosse and offered him a job recording sounds of nature.
Paul Jay Robbins, a journalist from the Los Angeles Free Press and a New Left political activist who reported on and participated in the 1966 Sunset Strip riots. Robbins met Parks through attending Byrds concerts, and Parks in turn brought Robbins into Wilson's fold after their February meeting.
Mark Volman, singer from the Turtles. He was introduced to Wilson by Hutton.

In preparation for the album's writing and recording, Wilson purchased about two thousand dollars' worth of marijuana and hashish. He also erected a $30,000 hotboxing tent in what was formerly his dining room, located a sandbox under the grand piano in his den, and, after developing a fixation with health and fitness, replaced his living room furniture with gym mats. David Oppenheim, who briefly visited Wilson's home in late 1966, later described the scene as "a strange, insulated household, insulated from the world by money... A playpen of irresponsible people." Vosse said that, despite the large amount of pot that was available, Wilson "wasn't stoned all the time... really, Brian had a job to do, and he was a hard workin' guy." Parks said that he was not interested in using psychedelics or being "involved with anything that would incapacitate" Wilson.
The album held a grandiose importance among those involved, as Anderle said, "Smile was going to be a monument. That's the way we talked about it, as a monument." Anderle arranged for various journalists to accompany Wilson in and out of the studio. This included Richard Goldstein from the Village Voice, Jules Siegel from The Saturday Evening Post, and Paul Williams, the 18-year-old founder and editor of Crawdaddy! Commenting on the reliability of figures such as Anderle, Siegel, and Vosse, journalist Nick Kent wrote that their claims are oftentimes "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 acknowledged that the "events surrounding the album differed so much according to each person's point of view, that no one can be certain ." Williams acknowledged that he, Wilson, Anderle, Parks, Taylor, and other journalists were "very stoned" and that perhaps "had some effect on our assessment of what was going on."
Wilson was later declared to have schizoaffective disorder, although most of his friends did not feel that he initially showed any signs of mental illness during the Smile era. Taylor remembered that although Wilson exhibited "scary" mood swings, his bandmates were generally supportive of him. In Vosse's recollection, Wilson was no more eccentric than "a lot of people in showbiz" and "all those things that people looked back upon later as quite alarming" had not originally appeared to be of significant concern. Anderle supported the notion: "Brian wasn't the only one. We were all strange, doing strange things."

Concept and inspiration

In late 1966, Wilson described Smile as a "far-out trip of the old west, real Americana, but with lots of interesting humor. I think it's going to be a big humor trip. There's even going to be talking and laughing between cuts." He commented that Dumb Angel was a working title and explained that the name was discarded because the group wanted to go with something "more cheery". In February 1967, Carl Wilson offered that the title Smile was chosen because the group was focusing on spirituality and "the concept of spreading goodwill, good thoughts and happiness". Biographer Peter Ames Carlin wrote that the Dumb Angel title may have been inspired by hallucinations Wilson saw while composing late at night under the influence of Desbutols.
Smile was to be explicitly American in style and subject as a riposte to the British sensibilities that had dominated rock music of the era. Brian later stated that he and Parks originally thought of Smile as a two-movement rock opera that would have been "less uplifting" than his 2004 version of the album, and that with Smile, he intended to "'Americanize' early America and mid-America" similar to how George Gershwin "Americanized" jazz and classical music. To Parks, Gershwin's 1924 composition "Rhapsody in Blue" represented a "musical kaleidoscope" of America, a quality that he and Wilson sought to emulate. Parks said that they "kind of wanted to investigate … American images. … Everyone was hung up and obsessed with everything totally British. So we decided to take a gauche route that we took, which was to explore American slang, and that's what we got." Further on the subject, he explained,
Wilson originally planned many different projects, such as a sound effects collage, a comedy album, and a "health food" album. Capitol did not support some of these ideas, which led to the Beach Boys' desire to form their own label, Brother Records. Plans for the label began in August 1966 with Anderle at the head. In a press release, he stated that Brother Records was to give "entirely new concepts to the recording industry, and to give the Beach Boys total creative and promotional control over their product." For the company logo, Wilson chose an image based on Cyrus Dallin's 1908 sculpture "Appeal to the Great Spirit", depicting a Native American on horseback.
Anderle said that it was "really important" to make the point that "Brian was so creative at this time it was impossible to try to tie things up... we were talking about doing humor albums... there was the Smile talk... there was 'The Elements' talk.... the humor concept was separate from Smile, originally.... Smile was going to be the culmination of all of Brian's intellectual occupations."
" was appropriated as the logo for Brother Records
Smile was also inspired by Wilson's growing fascination with matters such as astrology, numerology and the occult. According to an unnamed participant, "If you came up to the house and introduced something new to Brian's thought processes—astrology, a different way to think about the relationship of Russia to China, anything at all—if all of a sudden he was into that, it would find its way into the music. You could hear a bit and say, 'I know where that feeling came from.'" Many firsthand and secondary accounts support that Wilson owned books that encompassed poetry, prose, cultural criticism, and "diverse expressions of non-Christian religions and belief systems" such as Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Subud. Much of this counter-cultural literature promoted related practices that Wilson was further interested by, such as meditation and vegetarianism. In a 2005 interview, Wilson stated:
Anderle said that Wilson was fixated on humor and spirituality, and "had a real innate sense of spiritualism without the knowledgeable part that you learn by reading.... Whatever manifestation it took was whatever it was. There was numerology for a while; there was astrology for a while. Then we got into the I Ching." Vosse said that he was told by Wilson "that he felt laughter was one of the highest forms of divinity... And Brian felt that it was time to do a humor album." He opined that Smile, had it been completed, would have been "basically a Southern California, non-country oriented, gospel album—on a very sophisticated level—because that's what he was doing, his own form of revival music".
Jules Siegel famously recalled that, during one evening in October, Wilson announced to his wife and friends that he was "writing a teenage symphony to God". According to Siegel, Wilson felt he was moving into a "white spiritual sound" that he thought represented the future of music. In November 1966, Tom Nolan of Los Angeles Times West reported that Wilson's shift in artistic focus was inspired by his psychedelic experience from the year prior. When asked where he believed music would go, Wilson responded: "White spirituals, I think that's what we're going to hear. Songs of faith." Nolan wrote, "He'd never take again, he says, because that would be pointless, wouldn't it? And the people who take it all the time, acid heads he can't go along with. Like all those people–Timothy Leary and all–they talk a lot, but they don't really create, you know?" In 2004, Wilson denied that Smile was religiously-influenced.

Themes and lyricism

Although Smile is a concept album, the surviving recordings do not lend themselves to any formal narrative development, only to themes and experiences. According to Heiser, there is also a wealth of material that appears to have "little, if anything to do with Americana theme". Other themes involved physical fitness, childhood, and the natural environment. Web journal Freaky Trigger states: "While the lyrics are usually pretty damned literary, at their most extreme, they're divorced from any kind of meaning in the straightforward sense."
By contrast musicologist Phillip Lambert describes Smile as "an American history lesson seen through the eyes of a time-travelling bicycle rider on a journey from Plymouth Rock to Hawaii." Documentarian Keith Badman states that Wilson intended the album to be an American-themed exploration of the innocence of youth and childhood. More wryly, Williams concluded that it was to be "perhaps the story of the unnatural love affair between one man's voice and a harpsichord". A melodic and rhythmic motif was configured into several tracks, which he says "break down the walls that give songs identities without ever offering conceptual explanation or resolution."
map showing the westward expansion of the early 1900s
Parks' lyrics employed wordplay, allusions, and quotations. He acknowledged that there were occasional "references" to specific historical entities, however, "I don't think that I was interested in wordplay as much as I was interested in the power of words." References to American history range from the emergence of railroads and automobiles to Western colonialism and its impact on Native American tribes. Scholar Darren Reid interpreted the focus on older American themes as a self-conscious, deeper reflection on the hedonistic, modern Americana of the Beach Boys' earlier songs. He said that, despite Wilson's later claims that the album was about humor and happiness, "the resultant album does not radiate predominately happy mood.... Perhaps the smile Wilson refers to is an ironic one... Humour, sarcasm, and lonely introspection are the contrasts that hold Smile together."
Some songs followed themes related to God and childhood, namely "Wonderful", "Child Is Father of the Man", and "Surf's Up". Only "Wonderful" referred to God explicitly. Parks supported that his associations with the spiritual aspect of Wilson's work were "inescapable", but professed that he disliked writing lyrics that dealt with religious belief, believing it gave the appearance of "trying to be uppity". In his recollection, "There's a lot of things about belief in Smile, and its very question of belief is what was plaguing Brian at that time. What should we keep from the structure that we had, the hard-wiring that we had with religion? He had religion beat into him, and I did in my own way, too. So there's a lot of thinking about belief."
When asked what words come to mind when listening to Smile in 2011. Wilson replied, "Childhood. Freedom. A rejection of adult rules and adult conformity. Our message was, 'Adults keep out. This is about the spirit of youth.'" In another interview that year, he questioned a journalist how they would categorize Smile. They responded with "impressionistic psychedelic folk rock", and said that while most rock seems to be about adulthood, Smile "expresses what it's like to be a kid in an impressionistic way" and "depicts the psychedelic magic of childhood", to which Wilson replied: "I love that. You coin those just right."
Carter summarized that Smiles subject matter engaged with matters related to history, culture, and society while also traversing "complex landscapes of faith: from national allegiance and ideological persuasion to religious belief and spiritual devotion." He argued that "Smile picks up where Pet Sounds left off", expanding the introspective themes of Pet Sounds into "an exploration of the nation’s historical, social, ideological, and cultural identity." In his view, the lyrics also espouse "an antiestablishment skepticism toward religious institutions", "an interest in alternative belief structures", and "exceptionalist leanings".

Composition and production

Modular approach

In the 1960s, it was common for pop music to be recorded in a single take, but the Beach Boys' approach differed. Since 1964, Wilson had performed tape splices on his recordings, usually to allow difficult vocal sections to be performed by the group. By 1965, he had become more adventurous in his use of tape splicing, such as on the song "And Your Dream Comes True", which was recorded in sections and then carefully edited together to create the final song. "Good Vibrations" set the precedent for Wilson's compositional approach for Smile. Instead of working on whole songs with "clear large-scale syntactical structures", he limited himself to recording short interchangeable fragments. Through the method of tape splicing, each fragment could then be assembled into a linear sequence, allowing any number of larger structures and divergent moods to be produced at a later time. A similar fragmentary approach is common in film editing, albeit under the term "dangling clauses".
Parks said that he and Wilson were conscious of musique concrete and that they "were trying to make something of it". Heiser called the album's use of jumpcuts a "striking characteristic" and said that they "must be acknowledged as compositional statements in themselves, giving the music a sonic signature every bit as noticeable as the performances themselves. There was no way this music could be 'real'. Wilson was therefore echoing the techniques of musique concrète and seemed to be breaking the audio 'fourth wall'—if there can said to be such a thing." He interpreted the methodology of using modules as consistent with the album's conceptual thread, "a return to the pre-grammatical, non-linear and analogical thinking of early childhood – they are artefacts of play." Ethnomusicologist David Toop countered that "modular" "suggests discrete components that interlock" and offered "cellular" as a possibly more accurate term.
The material was continuously revised, rewritten, and rearranged on a daily basis. Anderle recalled examples: "The beginning of 'Cabin Essence' becomes the middle of 'Vega-Tables', or the ending becomes the bridge. I would beg Brian not to change a piece of music because it was too fantastic. But when Brian did change it, I admit it was equally beautiful." Some of the songs were fully-composed with obvious verse-chorus structures while other songs were short segments designed to illustrate a mood or a setting. Due to the fragmentary and never-finalized nature of the recordings, it is ambiguous when and where most Smile songs begin and end.
In the mid-1960s, trialing mixes required the physical act of cutting tape reels and splicing them together. Creating an entire LP that relied on these processes proved too challenging for Wilson. Engineer Mark Linett argued that Wilson's ambitions were implausible to fulfill with pre-digital technology, especially with "the infinite number of possible ways you could assemble this puzzle." His colleague Alan Boyd shared the same view, stating that the tape editing "would have been probably an unbearably arduous, difficult and tedious task". Wilson said: "Time can be spent in the studio to the point where you get so next to it, you don't know where you are with it, you decide to just chuck it for a while."

Orchestrations and arrangements

About fifty hours of tape was produced from the Smile sessions and encompassed musical and spoken word to sound effects and role playing. Many of the modules were composed as word paintings and invoked visual concepts or physical entities. According to Toop, during the mid-1960s, Wilson's style was akin to "cartoon music and Disney influence mutating into avant-garde pop". Heiser argues that attempting to summarize the whole of Smile is "a pointless exercise" and that it is preferable to write of "the many musical inhabitants of this complex, nebulous macrocosm." He lists several of these through the following descriptions:

"... a Renaissance-era vocal motet by Carlo Gesualdo, filled with manneristic, unpredictable chromatic turns piano, baritone guitar and upright bass played in a tic-tac style, dobro, bouzouki, and bass harmonica. There was also a greater complexity to Wilson's compositions. Jardine said that the music became "more textural, more complex and it had a lot more vocal movement.... With and other songs on Smile, we began to get into more esoteric kind of chord changes, and mood changes and movement. You'll find Smile full of different movements and vignettes. Each movement had its own texture and required its own session."" As with Pet Sounds, Smile featured a more unique sense of rhythm relative to the band's earlier records.

Smile drew from what most rock stars of the time considered to be antiquated pop culture touchstones, like doo-wop, barbershop, ragtime, exotica, pre-rock and roll pop, and cowboy films. Some of the music incorporated chanting, forays into Indian and Hawaiian music, jazz, classical tone poems, cartoon sound effects, musique concrète, yodeling, and elements derivative of Sacred Harp, Shaker hymns, Mele, and Native American chants. Music critic Erik Davis wrote of the album's disconnect to contemporary rock music clichés, noting that "Smile had banjos, not sitars". Wilson said he deliberately avoided traditional rock instrumentation because he wanted to employ ideas that were more "original" for Smile. Also recorded were renditions of older songs such as "Gee", "I Wanna Be Around", "The Old Master Painter", and "You Are My Sunshine". Priore described this action as Wilson's attempt to expose "pre-'60s songwriting... to the psychedelic era."
Harpsichords and tack piano feature prominently, as well as mallets and "quirky/echoey percussion". Parks said that the "first thing I can remember in the studio" with Wilson was his use of "tuneful percussion, like a piano or a Chinese gong", which reminded Parks of early 20th-century orchestrations by men such as Percy Grainger, particularly Grainger's arrangement of "Country Gardens". Priore noted that a "flair for exotica" can be heard in "Holidays", "Wind Chimes", "Love to Say Dada", and "Child Is Father of the Man". Heiser observed that "playful" and "colorful" moods – which he likens to the music of Sesame Street – are consistent throughout the recordings.
Among the many "contradictory templates" Toop felt were "buried within Smile's music legacy" were Frank Sinatra, the Lettermen, the Four Freshmen, Martin Denny, Patti Page, Chuck Berry, Spike Jones, Nelson Riddle, Jackie Gleason, Phil Spector, Bob Dylan, the Penguins, and the Mills Brothers. He wrote that collaborations between Miles Davis and Gil Evans "haunt SMiLE tracks like 'Look ' and 'Child Is Father of the Man'", and compared the project's "explorations of acoustic phenomena" to "similar tendencies by Charles Ives, Les Baxter's thematic LPs, and Richard Maxfield's electronic experiments with insect sounds or instruments played underwater". Furthermore, he wrote that the project may be regarded as tone poems "in oblique relationship to Third Stream, that rejected dream of the late 1950s best described in Charles Mingus's term 'jazzical'". In 2004, Wilson stated that Smile was too advanced for him to consider it pop music, and said that he admired and was influenced by Johannes Sebastian Bach for his ability to construct a continuum of complex music using simple forms and simple chords.
The vocal arrangements, according to Heiser, use "a wide range of pitch centres, antiphonal effects, rhythmic variations, juxtapositions of legato and staccato figures, rounders-like echoes, and vocal effects not usually associated with mid-sixties rock records." Academic Brian Torff commented that Smile contained "choral arranging" and a "rhapsodic Broadway element". Toop wrote that the Smile vocals "willfully regresses into baby talk". Williams suggested that, "for the most part", Smile "uses words the same way it uses strings and keyboards—for their sounds." Freaky Trigger concurred that "the line between the sung word and mere sound become criss-crossed and blurred again and again and again... where the word becomes subservient to sound, which is only six or so steps on the road to sound-for-the-sake-of-sound". The journal considers comparisons with the work of Sun Ra and John Cage, and concludes that this was a reconfiguration of doo-wop, a genre that the Beach Boys were rooted in.
Psychedelic musical characteristics distinguished the Beach Boys' mid-1960s work, particularly through the group's invocation of "greater fluidity, elaboration, and formal complexity", "a cultivation of sonic textures", "the introduction of new instruments, multiple keys, and/or floating tonal centers", and the occasional use of "slower, more hypnotic tempos". Petridis wrote that until the negative effects of LSD surfaced in rock music via Skip Spence's Oar and Syd Barrett's The Madcap Laughs, "artists tactfully ignored the dark side of the psychedelic experience". She argued that Smile presented such a quality in the form of "alternately frantic and grinding mayhem", "isolated, small-hours creepiness", and "weird, dislocated voices".

Potential contents

Tracks listed on Wilson's 1966 note

On December 15, 1966, Wilson attempted to ease Capitol's concerns over the album's delay by delivering a handwritten note that contained an unordered, preliminary track listing, which later provoked much speculation about the album. Capitol prepared record sleeves that listed those songs on the reverse side with the disclaimer "see label for correct playing order".

"Good Vibrations"

As Wilson neared the completion of "Good Vibrations", he asked Parks to rewrite the song's lyrics, but Parks declined, as he did not wish to alienate Mike Love. Wilson later said of the song, "I had a lot of unfinished ideas, fragments of music I called 'feels.' Each feel represented a mood or an emotion I'd felt, and I planned to fit them together like a mosaic."

"Heroes and Villains"

"Heroes and Villains", the first song Wilson wrote with Parks, was envisioned by Wilson as a three-minute musical comedy to surpass "Good Vibrations". He created myriad versions of the track, some of which ranged in length from six to eight minutes. Wilson came up with the title and told Parks that he thought of the Old West when he wrote the melody, which reminded Parks of the Marty Robbins song "El Paso". Parks immediately conceived the opening line: "I've been in this town so long that back in the city I've been taken for lost and gone and unknown for a long, long time."
The success of their collaboration led to them writing more songs with an Old West theme, including "Barnyard" and "I'm in Great Shape". In 1978, Wilson told biographer Byron Preiss that there was intended to be a piece called the "Barnyard Suite", which would have been "four songs in four short pieces, combined together, but we never finished that one. We got into something else." On November 4, 1966, Brian recorded a piano demonstration of "Heroes and Villains" that included "I'm in Great Shape" and "Barnyard" as sections of the song, but on his note from December, "I'm in Great Shape" was listed as a separate track from "Heroes and Villains".

"Wind Chimes"

Marilyn said: "We went shopping one day and we brought home some wind chimes. We hung them outside the house and then one day, while Brian was sitting around he sort of watched them out the window and then he wrote the song . I think that’s how it happened. Simple. He does a lot of things that way." In July 1967, the bass line was reworked into "Can't Wait Too Long".

"Wonderful"

The title of "Wonderful" derived from a pet name Wilson had for Marilyn. Parks identified the music as "entirely different from anything else. and I thought that it was a place, an opportunity, to begin a love song.... Now I thought, once we had gotten 'Heroes And Villains' done, we might have seen a boy/girl song emerge, other than 'Wonderful'. Honestly, I really thought we would do it, but I never found an opportunity to pursue that with the music I was given. Between August and December 1966, Wilson recorded three arrangements of the song, all of which were unfinished.

"Cabin Essence"

"Cabin Essence", according to Wilson, is a song "about railroads, and I wondered what the perspective was of those Chinese labourers who worked on the railroads. They'd be hitting the thing but look away too and noticing, say, a crow flying overhead. The oriental mind going off on a different track." Parks said, "we were trying to write a song that would end on a freeze frame of the Union Pacific Railroad—the guys come together and they turn around to have their picture taken." Biographer Jon Stebbins deemed the song "some of the most haunting, manic, evil-sounding music the Beach Boys ever made" with its waltz chorus replete with "demonic chanting, buzzing cellos, and rail-spike pounding".
The track begins with a 40-second section called "Home on the Range", with the accompaniment involving piano, banjo, bass, flute, harmonica, and backing vocals singing an ascending "doing" melody. The next section, "Who Ran the Iron Horse?", contains a more rapturous combination of drums, fuzz bass, cello, and backing vocals. This two sections repeat and are then followed by "Grand Coolee Dam", which involves the chant "over and over the crow cries uncover the cornfield / over and over the thresher and hovers the wheatfield". The last section incorporates a stringed instrument played like a sarod, an instrument associated with Hindustani music. Priore writes that the song "sums up the Western portions of Smile by crossing continents in music".

"Child Is Father of the Man"

"Child Is Father of the Man" features keyboard, trumpet, vocal rounds, and a droning guitar saturated with reverb. According to Parks, the lyric came from Wilson's "fervent desire to re-invent himself as an individual, not as a boy". The title was appropriated from William Wordsworth's poem "My Heart Leaps Up". Parks later said that other lyrics had been written for the song that were never recorded. In 2003, he wrote new lyrics to complete the song.

"Surf's Up"

"Surf's Up" is the second song Wilson and Parks started writing together. It was composed as a two-movement piece, most of it in one night while they were high on Wilson's Desbutols. Wilson commented that the song's first chord was a minor seventh, "unlike most of our songs, which open on a major – and from there it just started building and rambling... when we finished it, he said, 'Let's call it "Surf's Up"', which is wild because surfing isn't related to the song at all." The song did not have a title until after the band returned from their tour of Britain. According to Parks, he had witnessed Dennis complaining that the group's British audiences had ridiculed them for their striped-shirt stage outfits. Parks said that this inspired him to compose the last lines of the song and suggest to Brian that the piece be titled "Surf's Up".
Oppenheim declared on his 1967 CBS documentary that "Surf's Up" was "one aspect of new things happening in pop music today. As such, it is a symbol of the change many of these young musicians see in our future." Singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb interpreted the song as "a premonition of what was going to happen to our generation and... to our music—that some great tragedy that we could absolutely not imagine was about to befall our world." In Priore's view, the song was "a plea for the establishment to consider the wisdom coming out of youth culture in 1966."

"Do You Like Worms?"

"Do You Like Worms?" is about the recolonization of the American continent. None of the lyrics mention worms. Parks later said that he did not know where the title came from and attributed it to possibly an engineer, Wilson, or Mike Love. The "bicycle rider" mentioned in the lyric is a reference to "Bicycle Rider Back" playing cards printed by the United States Playing Card Company during the 19th century. Parks commented, "A lot of people misinterpreted that, but that's OK; it's OK not to be told what to think, if you're an audience." In January 1967, the song's keyboard break melody was rerecorded as the chorus of "Heroes and Villains". In 2004, the song was retitled "Roll Plymouth Rock".

"Vega-Tables"

"Vega-Tables", according to Wilson, came from his desire "to turn people on to vegetables, good natural food, organic food. Health is an important element in spiritual enlightenment. But I do not want to be pompous about it, so we will engage in a satirical approach." Siegel recalled that, while smoking marijuana with Wilson and the "Beach Boys marijuana-consumption squad", Vosse mused at how violence in their "vegetative" state could not be achieved, provoking laughter and further discussion of being a vegetable. Siegel said that this encounter was what inspired Wilson to write the song. It was the last Parks co-write that was recorded for the album. A module called "Do a Lot" or "Sleep a Lot" was considered for inclusion in "Heroes and Villains". In 1967, the section spun off into a piece called "Mama Says".

"The Old Master Painter"

Also known as "My Only Sunshine", the track is a medley of the standards "The Old Master Painter" and "You Are My Sunshine". Dennis sang the lead on "You Are My Sunshine". In 2005, Wilson wrote that the rendition of "The Old Master Painter" was brief because he could not remember the full song. In January 1967, the track's ending was repurposed as the ending of "Heroes and Villains", minus the "when skies are gray" vocals.

"The Elements"

"The Elements" was a conceptualized four-part movement that encompassed the four classical elements: Air, Fire, Earth, and Water. According to Anderle, Wilson "was really into the elements", so much so that he "ran up to Big Sur for a week, just 'cause he wanted to get into that, up to the mountains, into the snow, down to the beach, out to the pool, out at night, running around, to water fountains, to a lot of water, the sky, the whole thing was this fantastic amount of awareness of his surroundings. So the obvious thing was to do something that would cover the physical surroundings." To assist with the recording of this piece, Wilson instructed others to travel around with a Nagra tape recorder and record the different variations of water sounds that they could find. Vosse recalled, "I'd come by to see him every day, and he'd listen to my tapes and talk about them. I was just fascinated that he would hear things every once in a while and his ears would prick up and he'd go back and listen again. And I had no idea what he was listening for!"
of 1871, an event which "" was based on
"" was recorded in November 1966. Parks said he "avoided the 'Fire' sessions like the plague" due to what he believed was Wilson's "regressive behavior" in this period. The track was recorded under unusual conditions. Wilson instructed a friend to purchase several dozen fire helmets at a local toy store so that everybody in the studio could don them during its recording. Wilson also had the studio's janitor bring in a bucket with burning wood so that the studio would be filled with the smell of smoke. He subsequently recorded the crackling noises made by the burning wood and mixed them into the track.
Anderle recalled that Wilson told the group "what fire was going to be, and what water was going to be; we had some idea of air. That was where it stopped. None of us had any ideas as to how it was going to tie together, except that it appeared to us to be an opera." Parks recalled that an elemental concept did not come up until later in the project. One of the illustrations created for the album included "Vega-Tables" as part of "The Elements", but Wilson's note listed "The Elements" and "Vega-Tables" separately. Wilson told Preiss that "Air" was an instrumental piano piece that was never finished.

Non-listed tracks

"Prayer"

"Prayer" is a wordless hymn that was intended to begin the album. Wilson wrote in 1990: "I was sitting at my piano thinkin' about holy music. I poked around for some simple but moving chords. Later I sat down and wrote 'Our Prayer' in sections. The boys were overtaken by the arrangement. I taught it to them in sections, the way I usually do. The purity of the blending of the voices made the listeners feel spiritual. I was definitely into rock church music." Lambert describes the piece as "every technique of chromatic harmony had ever heard or imagined." On the session tape, Wilson announces, "This is intro to the album, take one." Jardine is heard remarking to Wilson that the piece could be considered its own track, but Wilson rejects the suggestion.

"I Ran"

"I Ran" is a song that featured upright bass, vibraphones, keyboard, French horn, guitars, organs, trombone and woodwind. The Beach Boys recorded vocals for the track on October 3, 1966, but the tape from that session was lost. In 2004, the piece was retitled "Song for Children" and given new lyrics by Parks.

"He Gives Speeches"

"He Gives Speeches" was recorded on September 1, 1966 at the second-to-last session for "Good Vibrations". In July 1967, the composition was reworked as the first section of "She's Goin' Bald".

"Holidays"

"Holidays" is an exotica instrumental that ends with a marimba melody later recycled for the 1967 version of "Wind Chimes". In 2003, the piece was given new lyrics and retitled "On a Holiday".

"I Wanna Be Around"

"I Wanna Be Around" is a rendition of the Sadie Vimmerstedt and Johnny Mercer pop standard. It was recorded the day after the "Fire" session, along with a piece titled "Friday Night", which was intended to segue from "I Wanna Be Around". Halfway through the session, Wilson conceived the idea to overdub the sounds of construction noises onto the track. He then handed out various tools to his musicians for them to create the sounds of sawing, wood cutting, hammering, and drilling. In 1968, these noises were used on the fade-out of the album version of "Do It Again". In 2005, Wilson wrote that the purpose of recording "I Wanna Be Around" was "to show how I could be funny and serious at the same time". Priore claimed that Wilson later told collaborator Andy Paley that "I Wanna Be Around" and "Workshop" were meant to function as a "rebuilding after the fire".

"You're Welcome"

"You're Welcome" is a vocal chant with heavy reverb that was later issued as the B-side of the 1967 "Heroes and Villains" single.

"Love to Say Dada"

"Love to Say Dada" is a piece that later evolved into "Cool, Cool Water". In 2003, "Love to Say Dada" was given new lyrics by Parks and retitled "In Blue Hawaii".

Audio vérité and other recordings

Wilson held sessions that were dedicated to capturing "humorous" situations. According to Carlin, Wilson devoted "hours recording himself and friends while they chanted, played games, had pretend arguments, or just shot the breeze. It was just like the old days with his Wollensak recorder, except much, much weirder." The surviving tapes include:

Lifeboat reel – 24-minutes long and features Wilson, Parks, Anderle, Vosse, Wilson's sister-in-law Diane Rovell, a woman named Dawn, and Siegel. Throughout the tape, Siegel encourages others to play the party game Lifeboat, where players act as shipwreck survivors who have to decide who among them will be tossed overboard in order to save the others. It later turns into barbed exchanges between the participants. At one point, someone asks Wilson, "What are we doing here?" As the mood worsens, Wilson is heard saying, "I feel so depressed. Really, seriously. I keep sinking. I'm too down to smile."
Second party reel – Features Wilson, Parks, Hutton, Vosse, and a man named Bob. The group pretend to order treats from a psychedelic ice cream van that plays a music bo version of "Good Vibrations". Wilson then leads a comedy routine about falling into a piano, and then into a microphone. The group also plays a rhythm on bongos while chanting "Where's my beets and carrots" and "I've got a big bag of vegetables".
"Vegetables Arguments" – Features mock disagreements between Vosse and session drummer Hal Blaine, who plays a man that is irate at Vosse for trespassing into his garden. It later turns into a serious conversation between Blaine, Vosse, and Wilson about the planetary alignments. Wilson completes the session by having his own mock disagreement with Blaine. Badman writes, "At one point, it is believed that these recordings will somehow figure into the 'Vegetables' track itself."

In early 1967, Brian's brothers Carl and Dennis went into the studio to record pieces that they had written individually. Dennis' "I Don't Know" was recorded on January 12, and Carl's "Tune X" followed on March 3 and 31. Badman speculated the recordings may have been "part of a conscious effort to make more of a group effort than effective a Brian solo project, or may simply be for Carl and Dennis to test their production mettle."
Brian also recorded novelty songs with photographer Jasper Daily: "Teeter Totter Love", "Crack the Whip", and "When I Get Mad I Just Play My Drums". Gaines wrote that these recordings were to have fulfilled Wilson's separate "humor album" concept. The collection was offered to A&M Records but rejected. Vosse said that when Wilson pitched "Crack the Whip" to Chuck Kaye, the head of A&M, "You could see the panic on face when he heard how awful it was. This look of, 'What the fuck do I do?'"

Artwork and packaging

Smile was to have included cover artwork designed by graphic artist Frank Holmes, a friend of Parks, as well as a booklet containing several pen-and-ink drawings, also by Holmes. He met with Wilson and Parks circa June 1966 and was given lyric sheets of their songs, for which he based his drawings on. By Holmes' recollection, his contributions were finished by October. The pieces were titled:

"My Vega-tables" / "The Elements"
"Do You Like Worms"
"Two-step to lamps light" / "Surf's Up"
"Diamond necklace play the pawn"
"Lost and found you still remain there"
"The rain of bullets eventually brought her down"
"Uncover the cornfield" / "Home on the Range"

Holmes based the cover on an abandoned jewelry store near his home in Pasadena. He recalled, "I thought that was a good image because of the way, any time you go into a store, you're entering something... This was something that would be pulling you into the world of Smile–the Smile Shoppe–and it had these little smiles all around." Depicted inside the shop is "a husband and wife—a kind of early-Americana, old-style, 19th-century kind of image." Wilson approved the cover and took it to Capitol. Parks later said that the illustrations heavily informed the making of Smile and considered them to be the album's "third equation". He felt that he and Wilson would not have continued the project the way they did without thinking of it in cartoon terms.
According to Vosse, the smile shop derived from Wilson's humor concept. He said that "everybody who knew anything about graphics, and about art, thought that the cover was not terribly well done... but Brian knew better; he was right. It was exactly what he wanted, precisely what he wanted." Parks recalled: "Frank was supposed to do something 'light-hearted', but there were no specific instructions and he came up with the perfect video vessel for realizing what we were doing, something I thought was an integral part of the situation. I think that still stands; I think of Smile in visual terms.
In September, Capitol began production on a lavish gatefold cover with a 12-page booklet containing featuring color photographs of the group as well as Holmes' illustrations. In early 1967, they added the repeated written instances of "Good Vibrations" on the album cover, which were not featured on Holmes' original design. The back cover featured a monochrome photograph depiction of the group, without Brian, framed by astrological symbols. Capitol produced 466,000 copies of the record sleeve and 419,200 copies of the accompanying booklet. They were stored in a warehouse in Pennsylvania until the 1990s.

Promotion and hype

In October 1966, "Good Vibrations" was released as a single and became the group's third US number-one hit, reaching the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in December, as well as their first number one in Britain. Wilson told Melody Maker that Smile would "be as much an improvement over Sounds as that was over Summer Days". A Los Angeles Times West Magazine piece by Tom Nolan focused on the contradictions between Wilson's unassuming "suburban" demeanor and the reputation that preceded him. Dennis told Hit Parader: "In my opinion, it makes Pet Sounds stink. That's how good it is." Derek Taylor continued to write articles in the music press, sometimes anonymously, in an effort to further speculation about the album. From October 25 to November 14, the rest of the group embarked on a tour of Europe, followed by their fourth annual US Thanksgiving tour from November 16 to 24.
In December, Capitol ran ads for the album In Billboard that read: "Good Vibrations. Number One in England. Coming soon with the 'Good Vibrations' sound. Smile. The Beach Boys." This was followed with a color ad in Teen Set that exclaimed "Look! Listen! Vibrate! SMILE!" Cardboard displays of the album's cover artwork were displayed in record stores, and Capitol circulated a promotional ad for employees at its label, which used "Good Vibrations" as the backdrop for a voice-over saying: "With a happy album cover, the really happy sounds inside, and a happy in-store display piece, you can't miss! We're sure to sell a million units... in January!" In the UK, one headline proclaimed that the Beach Boys' British distributor EMI Records were giving the band the "biggest campaign since the Beatles".
On December 10, NME published a reader's poll that placed Wilson as the fourth-ranked "World Music Personality"—about 1,000 votes ahead of Bob Dylan and 500 behind John Lennon. In addition, the Beach Boys were voted the top band in the world, ahead of the Beatles, the Walker Brothers, the Rolling Stones, and the Four Tops. On December 17, KRLA Beat published a nonsense article by Wilson, titled "Vibrations – Brian Wilson Style", that contained many private jokes and references. It discussed the "energy" between himself, David Anderle, and Michael Vosse, as well as Guy Webster, Hal Blaine, and possibly Jules Siegel. In one excerpt, Wilson wrote, "Grasping firmly onto the carrot, Brian ate it quickly, and, lo and behold! – it gave him some very out-of-sight vision, of a very out-of-sight world. "
In April 1967, CBS premiered , a documentary by David Oppenheim. According to Leaf, the documentary was originally supposed to be focused on Wilson, but it was later decided to expand the scope of the program due to the Beach Boys' waning popularity in early 1967. Oppenheim recalled: "Some person in New York was very high on Brian Wilson. I was very curious about him and his music." An interview with Wilson was attempted, but the crew failed to "get much out of him. Some guy said, 'He's not verbal.' He was odd and seemed odder. I had heard the stories before we got there of how crazy he was. Van Dyke seemed brilliant, intelligent, off-the-wall, and smashed." Unused sequences were filmed with Wilson at his pool. Wilson's segment ultimately only featured him singing "Surf's Up" at his piano without any interview footage or references to Smile.
Leaf wrote that although the success of "Good Vibrations" "bought Brian some time shut up everybody who said that Brian's new ways wouldn't sell... his inability to quickly follow up became a snowballing problem." Sanchez writes that Wilson was "poised to take his place next to the Beatles and Bob Dylan on the board of pop music luminaries", but as time passed, the hype for Smile went from "expectation" to "doubt" and "bemusement".

Recording history, delays, and litigation

On May 11, 1966 Wilson went into Gold Star Studios and recorded an instrumental take of "Heroes and Villains". The session was conducted as an experiment and was not a full-fledged recording. On August 3, Wilson returned to the studio for the tracking of "Wind Chimes", marking the unofficial start of the album's sessions. From then, over 80 sessions were conducted for the album, spread out over the next ten months. "Good Vibrations" was completed on September 21. By then, Dumb Angel had been renamed to Smile.
Smile was first projected for a December 1966 release date. On December 15, Wilson informed Capitol A&R director Karl Engemann that the album and its lead single "Heroes and Villains" would probably be delivered "some time prior to January 15". By then, Parks had reduced his appearances at session dates. Wilson had also begun to suspect that Capitol was withholding payments from the band and instructed Grillo to conduct an audit of the label's financial records. Discrepancies were soon found.
Capitol delayed the release date of Smile and "Heroes and Villains" to March 1967. Possibly due to their insistence on a ready single, Wilson returned to work on "Heroes and Villains" on December 19, 1966 after which he halted work on the album's other tracks until April 1967. In January, Brian missed the deadline and began working less on the album. Carl received a draft notice from the US Army, and Parks was offered a solo artist deal from Warner Bros.
in Hollywood
On February 28, the band launched a lawsuit against Capitol that sought neglected royalty payments in the amount of $250,000. Within the lawsuit, there was also an attempt to terminate their record contract prior to its November 1969 expiry. Following this, Wilson announced that the album's lead single would be "Vega-Tables", a song that he had yet to start recording. Anderle met with many record companies but failed to secure a distributor for Brother Records. On March 2, after a session for "Heroes and Villains", Wilson and Parks ran into disagreements, possibly over lyrics, and temporarily dissolved their partnership. The event is sometimes considered the symbolic end of the Smile era.
Later in March, Wilson cancelled a session – because he decided that the "vibrations" were too hostile – at a cost of $3,000. Two other dates were also cancelled. On March 18, KMEM in San Bernardino conducted a radio survey that reported that Wilson was busy preparing "Heroes and Villains" and Smile, "and he's informed the Capitol bosses that he doesn't intend to 'hold back' on these projects." On March 30, KFXM reported that the continued litigation had held up the release of the new single. Parks briefly reteamed with Wilson in the studio on March 31.
Parks' last recorded appearance on the album's sessions was for a "Vega-Tables" date on April 14. Afterward, Wilson took a four-week break from the studio. On April 29, Taylor announced in Disc & Music Echo that "All the 12 songs for the new Beach Boys album are completed and... there are plans to release the album on a rush-schedule any moment." That same day, a Taylor-penned press release, published in Record Mirror and NME, revealed that "Heroes and Villains" was delayed due to "technical difficulties" and that the forthcoming lead single would be "Vegetables" backed with "Wonderful". A session scheduled for May 1 was cancelled.
On May 11, Wilson returned to work on "Heroes and Villains". On May 15, he cancelled a session for "Love to Say Dada", again due to "bad vibes". The final session for the album was held for "Love to Say Dada" on May 18. A follow-up that was scheduled for the next day was cancelled.

Cancellation

Parks' departure

Smile was shelved due to a combination of corporate pressures, technical problems, internal power struggles, legal stalling, and Wilson's deteriorating mental health. Wilson started having increasing doubts about the project during the latter months of 1966. In Parks' recollection, "the whole house of cards began tumbling down" when he was invited to the studio by Wilson to settle a dispute from Love over the "Cabinessence" lyric "over and over the crow cries uncover the cornfield". Love did not understand the lyrics and thought that they were possible references to drug culture, something that he did not wish to be associated with. He took to characterizing Parks' contributions as "acid alliteration".
Parks said that he dissociated himself from the group "because it was already decided by Mike Love, as well as by the least known members, that I had written some words that were indecipherable and unnecessary. In short, they had a better lyricist on Pet Sounds than the one they had on Smile." He did not wish to involve himself with what he felt were family feuds unrelated to him and thought that Smile could have been finished without his continued participation. Love later referenced the meeting regarding the "Cabinessence" lyric: "I said , 'What the fuck does that mean?' It's not meant to be an insult. He didn't get insulted. He just said, 'I haven’t a clue!' And it wasn't like I was against his lyrics. But people don’t know the way I think. And they don’t give a fuck about the way I think, either. But that’s okay. I'm a big boy, and I can take that. I was just asking: What did it mean?"
By January 1967, the recording sessions were marked by tension, a contrast from the joyous atmosphere that began the project. Wilson's progressively erratic behavior also started to alarm his associates. In a 1968 discussion with Williams for Crawdaddy!, Anderle said that tensions between Parks and Wilson flared after February 1967, when the songwriters "started clashing" because Wilson thought Parks' "lyric was too sophisticated, and in some areas Brian's music was not sophisticated enough ." Recalling the then-projected single release of "Vega-Tables", Parks said, "I am sure I would not have wanted 'Vega-Tables' to be given too much emphasis. For Smile, that celebrated collaboration, to be dependent on a commercial release of 'Vega-Tables' as a single, was to me tremendously ill-advised, wherever it came from." Jules Siegel said that Parks was "tired of being constantly dominated by Brian."
Most of the coterie, including Parks, dissociated themselves or were exiled from Wilson's social group by April. Around this time, Wilson became aware of rumors alleging that Derek Taylor had possibly played some of the Smile tapes for the Beatles. His attitude changed "completely", according to Parks, as he felt "raped" and began "question the loyalties of the people who were working for him".
Parks was depended upon by Wilson whenever issues came up in the studio, and when he left, the end result was that Wilson lost track of how the album's fragmented music should be assembled. Anderle said that, at the time, he felt that "the central thing was Van Dyke's severing of the relationship." He left of his own accord weeks later; the last time Wilson was visited by Anderle to discuss business matters, Wilson refused to leave his bedroom. It is sometimes suggested that Mike Love was responsible for the project's collapse. Love dismissed such claims as hyperbole and said that his vocal opposition to Wilson's drug suppliers was what spurred the accusation that he, as well as other members of the band and Wilson's family, sabotaged the project. In a 1998 deposition related to the memoir , Wilson denied that Love's concerns over the lyrics made him shelve the album.

Announcement and ''Smiley Smile''

In April 1967, Wilson and his wife put their Beverly Hills home up for sale in an attempt to extricate themselves from Wilson's "hanger-ons" and took residence at a newly-purchased mansion in Bel Air. Wilson also set to work on constructing a personal home studio. Desperate for a new product from the group, on April 28, the group's British distributor EMI released "Then I Kissed Her" as a single without the band's approval. On May 6, a week after stating that Smile was to be released "any moment", Taylor announced in Disc & Music Echo that the album had been "scrapped" by Wilson. Wilson reflected that he had run out of ideas "in a conventional sense" during this period and had been "about ready to die". He declared to his bandmates that most of the material recorded for Smile was now off-limits and later said that his decision to keep "Surf's Up" unreleased was one that "nearly broke up" the band.
From June to July, the Beach Boys reconvened at Wilson's home to record the bulk of Smiley Smile at his improvised studio. The album is a significantly less ambitious affair than Smile, being stylistically similar to Beach Boys' Party!, and includes simplified remakes of selected Smile material. It is sometimes considered the fulfillment of Wilson's "humor" concept album. This belief was shared by Anderle, who speculated, "I think that what Brian tried to do with Smiley Smile is he tried to salvage as much of Smile as he could and at the same time immediately go into his humor album." Carl compared it to "a bunt instead of a grand slam".
Only two tracks on Smiley Smile used modules that had originated from the Smile sessions. Parks was not involved with the album's making and said that he was "astonished" when he heard "Heroes and Villains" on the radio due to the record's sequencing and production quality. The cover artwork featured a new illustration of Frank Holmes' smile shop, this time located in the middle of an overgrown jungle.
On July 18, Capitol announced that they had reached a settlement with the band, and Brian announced the launch of Brother Records, whose product was to be distributed by Capitol. Capitol A&R director Karl Engemann began circulating a memo, dated July 25, in which Smiley Smile was referred to as a "cartoon" stopgap for Smile. The memo also discussed conversations between him and Wilson pertaining to the release of a 10-track Smile album that would not have included "Heroes and Villains" or "Vegetables". This never came to fruition and, instead, the group embarked on a tour of Hawaii in August.
Smiley Smile, the first record by the band in which the production was credited to "the Beach Boys", was released on September 18 to an underwhelming critical and commercial response. "Undoubtedly the worst album ever released by The Beach Boys", Melody Maker wrote. "Prestige has been seriously damaged." In the US, the album peaked at number 48, but when released in the UK in November, it performed better, reaching number 9. From this point on, the group was virtually blacklisted by the music press, to the extent that reviews of the group's records were either withheld from publication or published long after the release dates.

Aftermath, recycled songs, and related work

Throughout 1967, Wilson's image reduced to that of an "eccentric" figure as a multitude of revolutionary rock albums were released to an anxious and maturing youth market. He gradually ceded production and songwriting duties to the rest of the group and self-medicated with the excessive consumption of food, alcohol, and drugs. Some of the Smile material continued to trickle out in subsequent Beach Boys releases, often as filler songs to offset Wilson's unwillingness to contribute. "Mama Says" from Wild Honey was based on a section from "Vega-Tables" and the bridge of "Little Bird" from Friends was based on the refrain of "Child Is Father of the Man".
After leaving the project, Parks signed a solo contract with Warner Bros, where he formed part of a creative circle that came to include producer Lenny Waronker and songwriter Randy Newman. In late 1967, the company released Parks' debut solo album, Song Cycle, a record that often was, and continues to be, compared to Smile.
In late 1969, the Beach Boys signed to Reprise Records, a deal that was brokered by Parks, now a multimedia executive at Warner. Their first Reprise album, Sunflower, was released in 1970. At Waronker's insistence, the record included "Cool, Cool Water", a song that had evolved from "Love to Say Dada". In 1973, Wilson and his group American Spring contributed additional vocal and instrumental parts to a remix of Dean Torrence's 1967 rendition of "Vegetables", credited to "Laughing Gravy", and released on the Jan and Dean compilation Gotta Take That One Last Ride.
In 1988, Waronker encouraged Wilson to compose a Smile-esque song for his debut solo album, Brian Wilson. This resulted in the "Rio Grande" suite, written with co-producer Andy Paley. Wilson commented that Waronker "wanted me to get a little bit into that kind of Smile bag, and I did. Some of it took on characteristics of the Smile album, but that's all, just characteristics. It wasn't directly influenced by Smile, just the vibes of it, the basic feeling of it." In 1995, Wilson reteamed with Parks for the collaborative album Orange Crate Art. Wilson also performed "Wonderful", in its original Smile arrangement, for the documentary , and this rendition was included on the accompanying soundtrack album.
For many years after its shelving, Wilson was traumatized by Smile and regarded the album as representing all of his failure. He stated that he considered the recordings "contrived with no soul" and "corny drug influenced music", as well as imitations of the work of Phil Spector without "getting anywhere near him". Over the years, he gradually became more comfortable discussing the work, calling it "too advanced" to have been released in 1967. Speaking in 2004, Parks said, "For so long, this project brought me nothing but humiliation. It was the first question people always asked—'How come Smile never came out?'"

Availability

''20/20'' and ''Surf's Up''

In 1969, "Cabin Essence" and "Prayer" appeared on the band's last-contractual Capitol album, 20/20, with additional vocals that were recorded by Carl, Dennis, and Bruce Johnston in November 1968. "Workshop" was also integrated into the 20/20 version of "Do It Again". According to Carlin, Brian was opposed to the inclusion of "Prayer" and "Cabin Essence", and refused to participate in the overdub sessions. Lead wrote that there were reportedly "twenty-five different mixes and combinations" of "Cabin Essence" that had been pressed on acetate discs before the group settled on the version they released.
For the band's second Reprise album, tentatively titled Landlocked, Wilson agreed to the inclusion of "Surf's Up". From mid-June to early July 1971, Carl and band manager Jack Rieley retrieved the Smile multi-tracks from Capitol's vaults, primarily to locate the "Surf's Up" masters, and attempted to repair and splice the tapes. Brian joined them on at least two occasions. Afterward, the band set to work on recording the song at Brian's home studio. Brian initially refused to participate in these sessions, but after a few days, he added a part to the song's "Child Is Father of the Man" coda. Landlocked was then rechristened Surf's Up and released in August. Most listeners at the time were unaware that the song derived from a lost Beach Boys album.

Release rumors

1970s

The band's 1969 contract with Warner Bros. held a clause which guaranteed a $50,000 advancement to the group provided that they deliver a completed Smile album by 1973 – Brian was not consulted on this stipulation. On February 28, 1972, Carl announced the imminent release of Smile at a London press conference. When asked if he had been working on the album, he replied that he had, during the previous June, and that the group had created safety copies of all the tapes. He claimed that these tapes were now fully assembled and new vocals had been overdubbed where necessary. Melody Maker printed a list of songs that were to be included on Carl's proposed version of Smile, some of which "seem to come under the overall subtitle of 'Heroes and Villains'". They were: "Child Is Father of the Man", "Surf's Up", "Sunshine", "Cabinessence", "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow", "I Love to Say Dada", and the original versions of "Vega-Tables", "Wind Chimes", and "Wonderful".
When asked about the forthcoming release at a later date, Carl responded: "We've all had intentions of finishing the album, but something persists that keeps that from happening, and I don't know what that is." In April 1973, the band's assistant manager Steve Love wrote a memo to remind the group that, "pursuant to the terms of contract between Warner Brothers and Brother Records, Inc., The Beach Boys' Smile album is supposed to be delivered to Warner Brothers no later than May 1st or $50,000 is to be deducted from any advance to the group after May 1st." No album was delivered, and as threatened, $50,000 was held back from the group's next payment.
In 1973, Brian told a Melody Maker reporter that there was not enough material to compile a Smile album and that it would never be released. During the interview, he performed the beginning of "Heroes and Villains" on piano and shifted to an "unfamiliar lyric and tune", explained by Wilson to be the song's full original version. Marilyn was astonished when told of the event. She said that Brian had not performed "Heroes and Villains" for anybody in years. In a 1976 interview, Wilson stated that he felt an obligation to release Smile and offered that the album would come out "probably in a couple years."
In his 1978 biography of the band, David Leaf wrote that Smile "can never be completed as Brian intended, so a compromise solution might be to release the surviving tapes and outtakes in a series of records called The Smile Sessions Elvis' Sun Sessions..." The book included quotes from Johnston, who said that such a release would be a "bad idea" commercially. He explained that it could only satisfy a highly-niche audience and said the material was too inaccessible for mainstream record-buyers. "Sometimes, you're kind of let down. Say you discover the tapes and you say, 'Oh yeah?' It's been talked about so much…It would live up to your expectations if you were Zubin Mehta analyzing a young composer's work." In a later interview that year, he told Leaf that the band's manager James William Guercio had insisted on opening L.A. with "Rock Plymouth Rock/Roll". Johnston said: "I wanted to make up a collage, but I want Brian to be the one to put the collage together. I can tell he still feels funny about that stuff. You know, there a lot of Smile stuff intact …"

1980s–1990s

In 1981, Johnston declared plans to issue a brief six-minute compilation of the album's recording sessions without Brian's knowledge. He said, "It's better to do it that way, because musically now, as opposed to '66 or '78, it would be more interesting to just give you a peek at it than to do the whole thing. There's been too much press on it. It's like talking about bringing out the '67 Rolls Royce and they finally show it in '81. You go, 'Oh, no.'" In April 1985, the video documentary The Beach Boys: An American Band featured some previously unreleased music, including an excerpt of "Fire", as well as a segment extracted from the group's Home Movies project.
During the late 1980s, Mark Linett prepared mixes of some Smile tracks in anticipation for their upcoming release. In 1988, Wilson confirmed that Smile was being compiled and mixed for an imminent release. In another report, he said that the forthcoming project "got sidetracked with business" and worried whether the album would sell due to it being mostly background tracks. He added that he considered asking his bandmates to overdub the remaining vocal tracks. In 1993, the first officially-sanctioned release of original Smile recordings were included on the career-spanning box set . The set feature the first official release of a compiled Smile album, sequenced by David Leaf, Andy Paley, and Mark Linett. Heiser reviewed that there was "little attempt made to create a sense of flow" and the modules were instead "mostly presented 'as-is'".
In 1995, Capitol announced a three-CD box set entitled The Smile Era to be released in the autumn. Producer Don Was told The New York Times: "We showed Brian an interactive CD-ROM of Todd Rundgren's and told him that this is how he should release Smile. He could load up an interactive CD with seven hours of stuff from those sessions and just tell the people who buy it, 'You finish it.' Brian's into it; now it's up to the record company." A Smile box set failed to materialize at this time partly due to the arduous task of compiling and sequencing. Following the recording of Stars and Stripes Vol. 1, the Beach Boys discussed finishing Smile at a band meeting. Carl rejected the idea, as he feared that it would cause Brian another nervous breakdown.

Bootlegs and fan reconstructions

Many of the original Smile recordings were only publicly available on bootlegs until 2011. These bootlegs often presented a hypothetical vision of the completed album, with compilers including liner notes that explained their choices of sequencing. One of the most relied-upon sources for the album's contents came from Wilson's list of song titles from December 1966. Audio bootlegs purported as Smile began circulating among fans during the late 1970s and drew upon released material from Smiley Smile, 20/20, and Surf's Up. The compilers were only informed by Wilson's list and were not always aware that the recordings on those albums were not the original Smile versions.
According to Andrew Flory, "Little is known about the process through which Smile material leaked into bootleggers' hands." Although there were rumors of leaked tape transfers and acetate discs in the late 1970s, only a minimal amount of this material was available to bootleggers until the early 1980s. In the 1970s and early 1980s, fan groups for the Beach Boys were organized by at least a dozen people, including Alice Lillie, Paula Perrin, Peter Reum, David Leaf, Marty Tabor, Don Cunningham, Domenic Priore, and Mike Grant. Most of the fan correspondence was through newsletters, which helped disseminate information and attract people who were interested in compiling details concerning the band's music. The proliferation of these groups was due in part to an advertisement for Beach Boys Freaks United, the band's official fan club, that was displayed on the back cover of the 1976 album 15 Big Ones. Priore later wrote that "It wasn’t much of a publication, but it did include a 'Trading Post' became an essential, pre-Internet contact source."
In 1983, a 48-minute cassette tape began circulating and was soon pressed onto an LP bootleg that was referred to as the "Brother Records" Smile. It included range of material that originated from Smile or was thought to be related to the project, as well as an unrelated 1959 recording, "Here Come de Honey Man" by Miles Davis, that was erroneously listed as "Holidays". The LP did not indicate an authorial origin on its sleeve but featured the organizational addresses of Cunningham's Add Some Music, Tabor's Celebrate, Beach Boys Freaks United, and the Australian publication California Music. In 1985, a "Second Edition" of the LP surfaced without the addresses and with a significantly different presentation order. The set also included different mixes that suggested a spread of newly available Smile recordings.
The wealth of Smile material that emerged via bootlegs in the early 1990s informed the public that the album was closer to completion than Wilson had admitted in interviews. Since the mid-1980s, CDs had supplanted vinyl as the predominate medium for bootlegs, and dozens of different Smile CD releases were traded and sold commercially by mail order, independent record stores, and head shops. Many of the new buyers had crossed over from Beatles bootleg markets, and responding to a suggestion in Leaf's 1993 Good Vibrations liner notes, a preponderance of listeners began constructing their own version of the album using the sound materials provided in the box set.
Two types of Smile bootlegs appeared in the 1990s: those in which the compilers attempted to assemble the album in a completed form, and others that simply presented the project as session recordings. The best-known releases were issued by the underground labels Vigotone and Sea of Tunes. They both released Smile sets that combined the two types of bootlegs and helped bring interest to the recordings among people outside of the Beach Boys fan community. Vigotone's 1993 version of the album was the heaviest-circulated Smile bootleg for that decade. In the late 1990s, Sea of Tunes released seven hours of Smile music spread out over eight CDs as part of their "Unsurpassed Masters" series. Those involved with releasing the Sea of Tunes bootlegs were later apprehended by authorities, and it was reported that nearly 10,000 discs were seized. By the end of the decade, Smile had become one of the most well-documented projects in the bootlegging community.

''Brian Wilson Presents Smile''

In the late 1980s, Priore collaborated with Darian Sahanaja and Nick Walusko on a punk-style fanzine called The Dumb Angel Gazette, the most comprehensive attempt to document information regarding the album. The second issue, Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile!, featured a 300-page summary of Smile history told through press clippings, reprints of older articles, and various primary sources, as well as original commentary. Additional assistance for this issue came from David Leaf, Andy Paley, journalist Greg Shaw, and musician Probyn Gregory, a friend of Sahanaja and Walusko. Afterward, Sahanaja, Gregory, and Walusco formed the pop group Wondermints, and later, the core nucleus of Wilson's supporting band in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Following Wilson's early 2000s live performances of the Pet Sounds album, Sahanaja began suggesting Smile songs at band rehearsals, which led to plans for concerts that comprised a Smile-themed setlist. Parks was later called on to the project to assist with the sequencing and the writing of new lyrics. Wilson, Parks, and Sahanaja configured the presentation into three movements: Americana, Cycle of Life, and The Elements. The latter effectively constituted songs that were leftover from the other two movements, and in Sahanaja's description, "the stuff that was the riskiest" from Wilson's point of view. "At that point, he and Van Dyke were talking as if they were finishing Smile."
at the Royal Festival Hall, February 2004.
Brian Wilson Presents Smile premiered at the Royal Festival Hall in London in February 2004. A studio album adaptation was recorded six weeks later and released in September. , a documentary film by Leaf, premiered on Showtime the next month. None of Wilson's bandmates were involved with BWPS or the documentary, and none of the original recordings were used on the album. The album debuted at number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100, the highest chart position of any album by the Beach Boys or Brian Wilson since 1976's 15 Big Ones''. In support of the album, Wilson embarked on a world tour that included stops in the US, Europe, and Japan.

''The Smile Sessions''

The Smile Sessions, released as a five-CD box set in October 2011, was the first official package dedicated to the Beach Boys' Smile. It features comprehensive session highlights and outtakes, as well as an approximation of what the completed album might have sounded like, using the 2004 version as a model. Like BWPS, many of the people involved with the making had been involved with the Beach Boys fan community for decades, including Priore and Reum, who contributed essays and were consulted for the project. The set received immediate critical acclaim, was ranked on Rolling Stones 2012 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", and won Best Historical Album at the 55th Grammy Awards.

Influence and legacy

Mystique and speculation

In the decades following Smiles non-release, it became the subject of intense speculation and mystique and gained status as the most legendary unreleased album in the history of popular music. Many of the writers and "hanger-ons" who surrounded Wilson at the time were largely responsible for the mythological status later afforded to the project. In October 1967, Cheetah magazine published "Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!", a memoir written by Jules Siegel that originated many of the subsequent myths and legends related to Smile. Flory credited the piece with giving "rock fans a manner in which to view Wilson as hip" as well as "venerat Smile as a relic of this hipness, intensifying audience interest in the unavailable work".
The mystique around the project grew during the 1970s, particularly among music critics. In 1983, Dave Marsh bemoaned the hype, calling it "an exercise in myth-mongering almost unparalleled in show business. Brian Wilson became a Major Artist by making music no one outside of his coterie ever heard." Lewis Shiner's 1991 science fiction novel Glimpses contains a chapter in which the protagonist travels back in time to November 1966 and helps Wilson complete Smile. By 1999, fans had published many essays devoted to the album through the Internet, and by the early 2000s, several books had been devoted to the album and its effect on Wilson's mental health. Writing in 2002, journalist Rob Chapman summarized that the album had become "the ultimate metaphor for pop's golden age; that moment when everything seemed possible, when heaven seemed reachable."
Many of the album's advocates believe that had it been released, it would have altered the group's direction and solidified their position at the vanguard of rock innovators. It may have also significantly impacted the development of concept albums, as Allan Moore argued, "it would have suggested an entirely different possible line of development for the concept album, wherein parts of tracks reappeared in others producing a form frankly far more sophisticated than any of its contemporaries." Bootlegs of the album became influential in their own right. In Courrier's words, the project "became oddly influential. While functioning mostly as a rumor, when some bootlegged tracks confirmed its existence, Smile became a catalyst for records that followed in its wake." David Howard, writing in his book Sonic Alchemy, said that "Had Wilson been able to connect all the dots, Smile would most certainly be regarded as one of pop's major artistic statements, rather than an infamous, unfortunate footnote. In 2003, Ed Howard of Stylus Magazine wrote that the album "could have expanded boundaries for both the Beach Boys and pop music as a whole. Instead, for the most part it remains unheard today, and that’s quite possibly the saddest fact in all of music."
in terms of cultural influence
Spencer Owen of Pitchfork argued that the album could have dramatically altered the course of popular music history, such that "Perhaps we wouldn't be so monotheistic in our pop leanings, worshiping only at the Beatles' altar the way some do today." In Anderle's belief, Smile "would have been a major influence in pop music... as significant if not a bigger influence than Sgt. Pepper was." When asked in a 1987 interview whether Smile would have topped his rivals' subsequent release, Wilson replied: "No. It wouldn't have come close. Sgt. Pepper would have kicked our ass." In 1993, Mike Love said he believed Smile "would have been a great record", but in its unfinished state, is "nothing, it's just fragments."
Reviewing the available bootlegs and officially released tracks for AllMusic, Richie Unterberger acknowledged that "numerous exquisitely beautiful passages, great ensemble singing, and brilliant orchestral pop instrumentation" were in circulation, yet "the fact is that Wilson somehow lacked the discipline needed to combine them into a pop masterpiece that was both brilliant and commercial." Former Record Collector editor Peter Doggett states that Smile would most likely have had the same reception as that afforded Parks' Song Cycle – namely, critical acclaim but a commercial disaster. He wrote that the release of Smile "would surely have set the Beatles back for months while they considered a suitable reply.... But it wouldn't have been commercial, in the way that the Doors, or Love, or Jefferson Airplane were." In the opinion of Kicks co-editor Billy Miller, "nobody would have got too jazzed over electricity being invented for the second time" had Smile followed the release of Sgt. Pepper, "And it's a damn shame, too, 'cause Smile''s primo hoot is that it would have put them all in second place – Spector, The Beatles, the biased "these-guys-stand-for-fun-and-we-don't-want-to-know-from-fun" critics".

Innovations

Wilson's methodology for Smile anticipated editing practices that would not become common until the digital age. "In a way", engineer Mark Linett said, "Brian invented the method of modular recording that we take for granted today." The album cover – considered to be among the most legendary in rock music – would have been one of the earliest instances of a popular music group featuring original commissioned artwork. Paul Williams argued that, with Smile, Wilson had become one of the earliest pioneers of sampling. Priore wrote that Wilson "manipulated sound effects in a way that would later be extremely successful when Pink Floyd released The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973, the best-selling album of the entire progressive rock period".
Ed Masley of AZ Central wrote that Smile "doesn't sound like" many other pop albums that were considered to be the vanguard of the "psychedelic revolution... but it clearly shares their spirit of adventure in a way that would have been unthinkable just two years earlier." Ed Howard wrote that the album's "arty experimentation", "exotic, often surprising arrangements", and "twisting wordplay" was "arguably" more innovative than contemporary work by the Beatles.
In 1999, Freaky Trigger wrote that Smile was not "the best album ever", but that it is "astoundingly original" and "tangible evidence of an alternative rock history which turned out differently." In 2011, despite its chosen focus being "new American music that is outside the commercial mainstream", online publication NewMusicBox made an exception with Smile, citing its standing as "an album recorded more than 45 years ago by one of the biggest musical acts of all time". The site's reviewer Frank Oteri wrote: Oteri concluded that "the same pride of place in American music history held by other great innovators" such as Charles Ives, George Gershwin, John Cage, John Coltrane, and James Brown would "probably" never include Smile, since, "For many people, the Beach Boys will always be perceived as a light-hearted party band that drooled over 'California Girls' while on a 'Surfing Safari'."
Writing in his 2014-published 33⅓ book about the album, Luis Sanchez offered that the project was a "radical" expansion of "the glow and sui generis vision" of Pet Sounds, one which "presents itself with a kind of directness that is unlike anything else in popular music." He wrote that album's myth had since lost its power to "to lure and convince" as "writers and cultists kept the story alive by rehashing hyperbole and rumor that could only take the story so far.... the myth itself overtook and nearly consumed the artist and the music it was about."

Alternative music

Smile was influential to indie rock and its mythology became a touchstone for chamber pop and the more art-inclined branches of post-punk. In Priore's estimation, the "alternate-rock" generation began embracing Smile after the early 1990s. In 2002, Chapman remarked that he had "yet to meet an ambient or electronica artist who doesn’t have a soundfile full of Smile bytes."
The Elephant 6 Recording Company, a collective of bands that includes Apples in Stereo, the Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel, Beulah, Elf Power, and of Montreal, was founded through a mutual admiration of 1960s pop music, with Smile being "their Holy Grail". Will Cullen Hart appreciated "the idea of the sections, each of them being a colorful world within itself. stuff could be so cinematic and then he could just drop down to a toy piano going plink, plink, plink and then, when you least expect it, it can fly back into a million gorgeous voices." According to Kevin Barnes, of Montreal's album was partly based on Smile.
Released exclusively in Japan, the 1998 tribute album Smiling Pets featured cover versions of Pet Sounds and Smile tracks by artists such as the Olivia Tremor Control, Jim O'Rourke, and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore. Trey Spruance, who recorded a version of "Good Vibrations" for the album, said that Smile "definitely" influenced the Mr. Bungle album California, "especially when it comes to the Faustian scale of it." The cover artwork for Velvet Crush's Teenage Symphonies to God was based on the Smile cover.
Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine said that his band's 2013 album MBV was inspired by the modular approach of Smile. Priore believed that the Smile recordings influenced albums such as XTC's Oranges & Lemons, the High Llamas' Gideon Gaye and Hawaii, the Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin, Mercury Rev's All Is Dream, the Apples in Stereo's Her Wallpaper Reverie, Heavy Blinkers' 2000 eponymous LP, and the Thrills' So Much for the City.

Unfinished state and interactivity

There remains no definitive form or content of Smile, and whether Smile should be considered an "album" has itself been challenged. Quoted in Leaf's 1978 biography, Anderle felt that Smile should be viewed not as an album, but an epoch that includes Pet Sounds and "Good Vibrations". Heiser wrote, "Possibly the best term offered yet to describe the project is: 'sonic menagerie'", a term used by co-producer Dennis Wolfe in the liner notes of The Smile Sessions.
Upon the release of BWPS, critics popularly viewed Smile as "finally completed". In his review of The Smile Sessions, Toop argued that such attempts to complete the album are "misguided". He described Smile as a "labyrinth" that exists "in a memory house into which Wilson invited all those who could externalize its elements". Freaky Trigger shared a similar view, writing: "There is no 'correct' track sequence, there is no completed album, because Smile isn't a linear progression of tracks. As a collection of modular melodic ideas it is by nature organic and resists being bookended." Toop said the project's demise and film-like editing process also "parallels the great lost projects by Orson Welles, Erich Von Stroheim and Sergei Eisenstein."
Academic Larry Starr opined that "the idea there could be a 'definitive' Smile decades after Brian Wilson abandoned the project was always chimerical". He added, "Those whimsically inclined might suggest that Smile’s apparent malleability could represent just one additional illustration of the extent to which it was ahead of its time." In a 2004 conversation with Wilson, Parks suggested that, with Smile, the pair may have inadvertently created the first ever interactive album.

Reconstructed track listings

All tracks written by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks, except where noted.

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