Brian Wilson
Smile

THE REVIEW

L.A. Beverly Hills, 1967.

It was all over: he had understood this immediately, from the very first chords. The others, on tour without him, he would alert as soon as he could manage, in a few hours or a few days, to get up from that damned chair that seemed to have swallowed him. He no longer knew how long he had been there, with his gaze lost in the void. Even the noises from the street seemed to come from a world from which he felt he had already taken leave. His room had turned into a battlefield. The effects of the wrath, which had left him in that almost catatonic state, were scattered all around, along with what remained of the tapes of the "teenage symphony to God," black confetti of a macabre party.
A mocking smile had settled on his face as soon as he started to connect again. That immense effort, the work that had absorbed all his energies, that had led to the break with the "beach boys," ending the carefree surf era ("Surf's Up") no longer existed, or rather, it was useless. Those English devils had beaten him to it. His intuitions, the innovations of song form, the arrangements he was so proud of, the piano inserts and the lyrics of his quirky friend Van Dyke, after listening to that fantastic album, already seemed dated to him, surpassed, as if someone had entered his mind and developed his ideas better and, above all, more completely. No, he couldn't accept it. And to hell with all the time and dollars spent on that album that was supposed to represent his personal revenge, after the half-failure of "Pet Sounds." He had done what was right: destroy a work that in his eyes no longer made sense, that seemed useless to him now. LSD, which on other occasions had been a caring companion, this time gave him no relief, leaving him even more alone with a grin fixed on his face.

L.A. Beverly Hills, 2004

The favorite room in his house had a beautiful grand piano in the center. On the walls, there were no framed platinum records, just a few paintings and photos of his loved ones. He was particularly attached to one: the snapshot of him on his birthday with his two deceased brothers, Dennis and Carl. Every afternoon he would go to the piano and play what he called his "obsessions," especially Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue", which he learned by listening to an old recording, not knowing how to read music. Then he would move on to something by Paul, always, but also "Be My Baby" by Phil Spector, and finally, he would start composing something of his own.
He had been doing this regularly since he was feeling better. Yes, soon he would be able to release something new, but now he had to focus on the old-new project. He had called that madman Dyke Parks, and they had already agreed. Those tapes, forgotten somewhere in Capitol's warehouses, would be reborn, finally completed. That composition, he recalled, was born with a tremendous creative flow.
He was young, full of energy, and it seemed like he had a sort of vision and wrote on impulse, without his usual collaborators. Some images forcefully returned to his mind, especially the sand-box, a sort of three-square-meter sand fort where he had placed the piano. It gave him inspiration, and it felt like being on the beach. There he composed "Heroes & Villains", "Surf's Up", "Wonderful", "Cabin Essence"... then the dogs started doing their business inside, and he dismantled everything.
But this was no time for memories. It was time to get to work. The beloved-hated album would be remade from scratch, but without erasing anything, respecting the original idea, that of gathering the history and music of every America, a true kaleidoscope. After a wait of 37 years, the mythical "teenage symphony to God" would finally see the light again: a smile lit up his pale, wrinkled face.