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Smile (occasionally typeset with partial capitalization as SMiLE) is a partially-recorded concept album by the Beach Boys originally intended to be the follow-up album to Pet Sounds. After the Beach Boys' main songwriter Brian Wilson abandoned large portions of music recorded from early 1966 to mid 1967, the group recorded the dramatically minimized Smiley Smile album in its place. Several of the original tracks eventually found their way onto subsequent Beach Boys albums. As Smile's fable grew, details of the original Beach Boys Smile recordings acquired considerable mystique, and it became famous as one of pop music's legendary milestones.

The project was later arranged for solo live performances by Wilson in 2004, and then followed up by the studio-recorded Brian Wilson Presents Smile. Though it received great critical acclaim, Wilson later admitted that his version differed substantially from how he had originally conceptualized the work during the 1960s. Between the thirty-seven years from its cancellation to the release of Wilson's presentation, bootlegged tracks from Smile circulated widely among record collectors, and many attempts were made by outside parties to "complete" the album the way it had been envisioned by Wilson in the 1960s based on contemporary publications and statements made by those whom were originally involved.

On October 31, 2011 The Smile Sessions was released, an approximation of what the completed album might have sounded like, the first disc largely following the template of Wilson's 2004 presented. Along with this came a sequence of newly-arranged surviving recordings and many unreleased session highlights and outtakes. It received unanimous critical acclaim. In 2012 it was ranked number 381 in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. In 2013, it won the Best Historical Album award at the 55th Grammy Awards.

Conception

The genesis of Smile was during the recording of Pet Sounds. On February 17, 1966, during the sessions for that album, Brian Wilson started work on a new single, "Good Vibrations". Seventeen recording sessions took place over four studios at a cost exceeding $50,000, making "Good Vibrations" the most expensive single of its time. It was created by an unprecedented recording technique: nearly 30 minutes of separate musical sections were recorded, spliced together and reduced into a three-minute pop song. The song quickly became the band's biggest international hit yet, rising to number one in over half a dozen countries including Britain and the United States. Smile was intended to be produced in a similar fashion.

Crucial to the inception and creation of Smile was Wilson's meeting with musician Van Dyke Parks in February 1966. They had been introduced to each other by mutual friends David Crosby and Terry Melcher, and Parks would often visit Wilson's home while he was working on Pet Sounds. When Wilson realized that Parks had an unusually elastic manner of speaking, he asked him if he could write lyrics for "Good Vibrations". Parks declined for the reason that he thought there was nothing he could add to the track.

In October 1966 interviews, Brian Wilson stated that the Beach Boys' next project was to be "a teenage symphony to God," and that, "It will be as much an improvement over Sounds as that was over Summer Days." The project was to have been an album-length suite of songs that were both thematically and musically linked, recorded using the unusual sounds and innovative production techniques that had contributed to the success of "Good Vibrations".

Wilson invited Parks to write lyrics for the new album in the second quarter of 1966 when the project was provisionally called Dumb Angel. This time Parks agreed and the two quickly formed a close and fruitful working relationship. In preparation for the writing and recording of the album, Wilson purchased several thousand dollars' worth of marijuana and hashish. In addition, Wilson famously installed a hotboxing tent in his home and relocated a grand piano to a sandbox in his living room. Between April and September 1966 Wilson and Parks co-wrote a number of songs in the sandbox.

Original themes and ideas

We just 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.

— Van Dyke Parks, 2005

Several key features of Smile are generally acknowledged: both musically and lyrically: Wilson and Parks intended Smile to be explicitly American in style and subject, a reaction to the overwhelming British dominance of popular music at the time. It was supposedly conceived as a musical journey across America from east to west, beginning at Plymouth Rock and ending in Hawaii, traversing some of the great themes of modern American history and culture including the impact of white settlement on native Americans, the influence of the Spanish, the Wild West and the opening up of the country by railroad and highway. Specific historical events touched upon range from Manifest destiny, the Great Chicago Fire, and the Industrial Revolution. Aside from focusing on American cultural heritage, Smile's themes include scattered references to parenthood and childhood.

It was around this period that Brian Wilson read Arthur Koestler's book, The Act of Creation. The book had a profound effect on him that carried onto the Smile project, specifically the human logistics of laughter. As a consequence, the Smile songs are replete with word play, puns and double entendres. One example is "Vega-Tables", which includes the lines "I'm gonna do well, my vegetables, cart off and sell my vegetables"; the phrase "cart off and" is a bilingual pun on the word Kartoffeln, which is German for potatoes. At one stage, Wilson apparently toyed with the idea of devoting Smile as a comedy album and a number of scrapped recordings were made in this vein.

Smile also drew heavily on American popular music of the past; Wilson's original compositions were interwoven with snippets of significant songs of yesteryear including "The Old Master Painter" (made famous by Peggy Lee), the perennial "You Are My Sunshine", Johnny Mercer's jazz standard "I Wanna Be Around" (recorded by Tony Bennett), "Gee" by the 1950s doo-wop group the Crows and quotations from other 20th century pop culture reference points such as the Woody Woodpecker theme and "Twelfth Street Rag". Various 18th–19th century works such as "My Heart Leaps Up", "Frère Jacques", "Auld Lang Syne", "My Prayer", and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" are also alluded to in song lyrics or titles.

Wilson's experiments with lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) were significantly influential on the texture and structure of the work, and another influence on his thinking at this time was his friend Loren Schwartz. Writer Bill Tobelman speculated that Smile is filled with coded references to Brian's life and his recent LSD experiences (a presumed Lake Arrowhead, California "trip" being the most important). He also argues that it was influenced by Wilson's interest in Zen—notably in its use of absurd humor and paradoxical riddles (koans) to liberate awareness from the mind—and that Smile as a whole can be interpreted as an extended Zen koan. Although Wilson often professed that he was attempting to create a new "white spiritual sound" and move into religious music, he later denied that Smile was religiously influenced.

Recording process

Studio techniques

Brian Wilson honed his atypical production methods over several years. In 1962, it was common for pop music to be recorded in a single take but the Beach Boys' approach differed. Using multitrack technology, elements such as backing vocals and guitar solos were often recorded independently and would later be combined to the basic track. From 1964 onward Wilson also began to physically cut tape to craft his recordings, allowing hard-to-sing vocal sections to be recorded, cut and attached with sticky tape to the start or endings of songs. By the time of the Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) album in 1965, Wilson was becoming more adventurous in his use of tape splicing.

With "Good Vibrations", Wilson took this modular approach to recording further, experimenting with compiling the finished track by editing together the numerous sections from multiple versions recorded at the lengthy tracking sessions. Instead of taping each backing track as a more-or-less complete performance—as had been the model for previous Beach Boys recordings—he split the arrangement into sections, recording multiple takes of each section and developing and changing the arrangements and the production as the sessions proceeded. He sometimes recorded the same section at several different studios, to exploit the unique sonic characteristics or special effects available in each. Then, he selected the best performances of each section and edited these together to create a composite which combined the best features of production and performance. The resulting final mix broke new ground in popular recording, since each section of the song was presented in its own distinct sonic 'envelope', rather than the homogeneous production sound of a conventional "one take" studio recording. The cut-up structure and heavily edited production style of Smile was unique for its time in mainstream popular music, and it suggests that Brian was aware of the techniques of musique concrète and the usage of chance operations in making art.

Wilson continued these patterns with the songs on Smile, working mainly at United Western Recorders with engineer Chuck Britz and sometimes Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles. He also used Sunset Sound Studios and Columbia Studios on Sunset Boulevard. The vocal sessions for Smile were usually done at Columbia, which had the only 8-track audio recorder available amongst the major recording studios at the time. From August 1966, he began a long and complex series of sessions—approximately 50 overall, discounting the 17 sessions needed for "Good Vibrations"—that continued until May 1967.

Although stereo recording was increasingly popular, Wilson always made his final mixes in mono, as did rival producer Phil Spector. Wilson did so for several reasons—he personally felt that mono mixing provided more sonic control over what the listener heard, minimizing the vagaries of speaker placement and sound system quality. It was also motivated by the knowledge that pop radio broadcast in mono, and most domestic and car radios and record players were monophonic.

Tracks and sequencing

The most ambiguous and least realized parts of the 1966 Smile concept was its ambitious narrative, length, track listing, and track order. The material recorded was set to be divided into a then-undecided number of musical suites or movements. Brian Wilson has stated that the exact running order was not decided in 1967 and that the original Smile would have been "less uplifting" than his finished 2004 version. He also claimed that he and Van Dyke Parks had originally thought of the album as a two-movement rock opera.

The 2011 release of the The Smile Sessions compilation proved conclusively that virtually all the musical "components" used to create Wilson's 2004 version of Smile are present in one form or another among the original 1967 recordings. However, the original track listing and running order were not established until 2004. Given the technical limitations of record production in 1967 and the sheer bulk of material that was being recorded, Wilson recorded far more music than could possibly have fit on one LP. At the time, the album was only ever envisaged as being a single LP. The intended track order and arrangement of the various songs, segments, and link pieces as of 1966 have remained either inconclusive or forgotten among the people involved.

"Heroes and Villains" was the ultimate keystone for the musical structure of the album, and the considerable time and effort that Wilson devoted to it is indicative of its importance, both as a single and as part of the Smile narrative. Like "Good Vibrations", it was edited together from many discrete sections. The complexity of Wilson's production at this time can be gauged by the sheer bulk of session material that has survived—more than 60 tracks in the five-CD The Smile Sessions boxed set are session recordings for "Heroes and Villains". Additionally, most individual tracks on Smile were composed as potential sections of "Heroes and Villains". Sessions for the various versions of "Heroes and Villains" extended from May 1966 to July 1967; there are dozens of takes spanning each section of the song, multiple versions of both the variant sections, and many attempts to splice together final mixes.

The other centerpiece was to be "Surf's Up," which had been for many years perceived as the intended ending climax of Smile.

"The Elements" suite

"The Elements" was a reputed movement which encompassed the four classical elements: Air, Fire, Earth, and Water. "Fire" is the only surviving recording that is certain to have been part of any specific movement on the Smile album. According to Smile historian Domenic Priore, conversations between him and Van Dyke Parks have told that "The Elements" were meant to invoke the increasing attention to physical fitness and environmentalism by anti-war peace movements.

Other leftover fragments

"Good Vibrations" was completed by Brian Wilson before the original recording sessions and released in October just as the sessions were getting underway. All of the other tracks were either not recorded or only exist in part-completed form, and many Smile-era recordings lack their full vocal arrangements, lyrics and melodies. Many of the shorter tracks, along with many other brief instrumental and vocal pieces, were evidently intended to serve as bridging sections that would have been edited in to provide links between the major songs.

"Holidays" was recorded as an oblique instrumental in mid-1966, and is one of the few pieces from Smile where every section was performed as part of one whole take. "I'm in Great Shape", "My Only Sunshine (The Old Master Painter / You Are My Sunshine)", "Barnyard", and the original "Vega-Tables" only existed as small fragments of tracks, and their complete structure hadn't been finalized. "You're Welcome" is a short chant sung by the Beach Boys over a thumpy background track featuring a glockenspiel and a timpani. The only lyrics are "Well / you're well / you're welcome to come". The other Wilson brothers also experimented with their own compositions in between sessions for the Smile album, but it's doubtful if they were to have been included in the album.

Various surreal comedy skits were recorded during the sessions as part of a "Psycodelic [sic] Sounds" series. An unused skit was also recorded by Brian Wilson with session drummer Hal Blaine to promote a then-proposed "Vega-Tables" single release.

Initial promotion and album readying

Capitol began production on a lavish gatefold cover with a 12-page booklet in December. Cover artwork was commissioned from Frank Holmes, a friend of Van Dyke Parks, and color photographs of the group were taken by Guy Webster. Frank Holmes also drew various other visual interpretations of individual Smile tracks based upon Parks' lyrics.

466,000 covers and 419,000 booklets were printed by early January 1967; with the following tracks listed on the back of the cover as per a handwritten note delivered to them a few weeks prior to Christmas:

This list was long considered crucial evidence of Wilson's intentions for the piece, but in 2006 it was discovered Brian had never seen it before. A comparison of the handwriting indicates that it may have been written by Carl Wilson, or possibly Brian's sister-in-law, Diane Rovell.

The Beach Boys were written about and interviewed extensively during the Smile era. Band members Al Jardine, Mike Love and Bruce Johnston all spoke positively of the album's recording sessions in contemporary music journals with Dennis Wilson famously confessing to a reporter: "In my opinion it makes Pet Sounds stink - that's how good it is!". The project was notably covered by Julies Siegel, who chronicled the band in a 1967-published article for Cheetah magazine entitled Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!.

In November 1966, Brian Wilson was filmed performing a complete 'demo' solo version of "Surf's Up" on piano for a CBS News special on popular music: Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution. Although he was filmed in late 1966, the special was not be aired until several months later.

The month after filming for CBS, the KRLA Beat magazine published a surreal vegetable-themed psychedelic piece written by Wilson. The story described the experiences of "Brian Gemini" as he encountered various characters lurking within the "Vegetable Forest", a few of which were based upon real-life acquaintances David Anderle, Hal Blaine, and Michael Vosse.

Some time in December, Brian informed Capitol that Smile would not be ready that month, but he advised that he would deliver it "prior to January 15". Capitol continued sending promotional materials to record distributors and dealers, and ads were placed in Billboard and teenage magazines including Teen Set. Capitol also readied a radio ad, using "Good Vibrations" as the backdrop against a voice-over reciting the album's promotional tagline. Wilson's conception of the work evidently changed around this time.

Project collapse

Brian Wilson began to encounter serious problems with Smile around late November 1966. Around this period, Brian was exhibiting consistent signs of depression and paranoia. After several months of internal conflict and only a few weeks before the release of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, the Beach Boys' press officer Derek Taylor announced to the British press on May 6, 1967 that the Smile project had been shelved, and that the album would not be released.

Brian Wilson's emotional instability and substance abuse

By the beginning of 1967, Brian's behavior became increasingly erratic, and his use of drugs escalated. While his actions were a concern for some of his friends and stories of his sometimes bizarre "off-duty" behavior became the stuff of legend, the session musicians who worked with him during this period have stated that he was totally professional in the studio. Although Wilson's paranoia was consuming him, it was not completely unfounded. Other people have said that he had good reason to be wary of his surroundings, pointing to his high position in the music industry and an instance where the master tapes for "Good Vibrations" had been stolen by an unknown party for three days.

We started to get indications that Brian was taking some hallucinogens, like LSD and stuff like that—a lot of the writers were doing that at the time—but it took a tremendous toll from him. He drove me around the parking lot of William Morris about twenty times, explaining to me about this great trip he had just taken, and I just wanted to be as far away from that as possible! Because I didn’t want to know about it—I wanted the innocence!

— Al Jardine, 1998

Following the recording session for the "Fire" section of "The Elements" at Gold Star Studios on November 28, Brian became irrationally concerned that the music had been responsible for starting several fires in the neighborhood of the studio. Wilson falsely claimed for many years that he had burned these session tapes, but that was not the case, although he did abandon the "Fire" piece for good. It has also been noted that Parks deliberately stayed away from the session—during which Wilson encouraged the musicians to wear toy firemen hats—and that he later described Brian's behavior as "regressive", something which band mates also noted during and after this session.

David Anderle was head of the Beach Boys’ label Brother Records during the period when Brian Wilson was working on the Smile album. Anderle painted a portrait of Wilson, which reportedly frightened him when he saw it, convinced that Anderle had somehow captured his soul on canvas. Anderle would go on to tell Rolling Stone years later that things had not been the same between him and Wilson afterward.

It was sometime in this period that Wilson went to see the film Seconds, which had a brief profound impact on him. Wilson had entered the theater late, and immediately upon arriving heard Rock Hudson's character "Mr. Wilson" greeted on screen, mistaking that the film was talking directly to him. He would expound on the experience saying that it had "completely blown" his mind, and that, "The whole thing was there. I mean my whole life. Birth and death and rebirth. The whole thing. Even the beach was in it, a whole thing about the beach. It was my whole life right there on the screen.…I mean, look at Spector, he could be involved in it, couldn't he? He’s going into films. How hard would it be for him to set up something like that?…You can understand how that movie might get someone upset under those circumstances."

Group conflicts, vocal session oppositions, and label pressure

In addition to Brian's mental and substance abuse issues, there were significant personal, business and legal pressures surrounding the Beach Boys during the recording of Smile. These included Carl Wilson's call-up notice for the draft (which he was to fight as a conscientious objector), plus the commencement of the group's contractual dispute with Capitol over royalty payments. In addition, there was the band's attempt to terminate their then-present contract, which was a legacy of Murry's management, and establish their own label, Brother Records. Bruce Johnston has also indicated in a web forum discussion that there was also opposition to the project from Capitol Records and from Brian's father, Murry.

Infighting within the group was also a potential factor in the demise of Smile. The December 6, 1966 session for "Cabin Essence" was famously the scene of an argument between Van Dyke Parks and Mike Love where the latter questioned Parks about the meaning of the song's lyrics, displaying uncertainty over whether they'd be appreciated and understood by the fanbase the band had built their commercial standing upon. Love was also critical of the drug culture the period brought to the group, observing the detrimental affects it played on his cousin. He has since hypothesized that his vocal opposition to those who supplied Brian with hard drugs caused those participants to spin a web that pinned Love as the reason to why Smile was shelved, something he says was further perpetuated by writers who weren't there.

Despite his reservations, Love contributed vocals when required and followed Wilson's odd requests to engage in behaviour such as acting as an animal on the floor while recording backing vocals. In an early 1967 issue of New Musical Express, Love spoke of how he believed Wilson had gone on to achieve "greater and greater things" that were received with awe by the group. Since then, he has noted that whatever misgivings he had toward Smile laid only within the lyrics and not the music. Carl Wilson corroborated Love's statements in the 1990s, and also added that he himself personally loved the lyrics. In response, Parks has repeatedly accused Love of historical revisionism, believing Love's hostility toward Wilson and Smile as "the deciding factor" in the album's postponement. Parks has also denied Love's belief that lyrics in Smile promoted or were based upon drug use.

Danny Hutton reflected in 2012 that during the sessions for Smile and Pet Sounds there was worry in the Beach Boys camp that they wouldn't be able to perform the songs live to a satisfactory degree, and that the provided lyrics were too discomforting to the band especially after having achieved relatively stable mainstream success. Other people who were present at the sessions—including David Anderle and Michael Vosse—have also reported that Smile vocal sessions had been tenuous between Brian, Parks, and the other Beach Boys. Accusations like these culminated in a 1971 Rolling Stone article, where it was speculated that Love in particular had issues with straying from "the formula". In the same article, it was also reported that Wilson had been forcibly assumed into a benefactor role for the band and his family, which added to his hesitancy in delivering a product that had the potential to be a great commercial failure. Wilson has maintained on multiple occasions that the other Beach Boys met Smile with huge disapproval, and that he was disappointed with their reactions. Other times, he has said that the group eventually grew to like the material as sessions progressed. In reference to all of these claims, The Smile Sessions compiler Alan Boyd has noted that group opposition is not audible on the recordings he has heard.

Van Dyke Parks' leave and constantly vacillating directive

I walked away from the situation as soon as I realized that I was causing friction between him and his other group members, and I didn't want to be the person to do that. I thought that was Brian's responsibility to bring definition to his own life. I stepped in, perhaps, I 'took a leap before I looked'. I don't know, but that's the way I feel about it.

— Van Dyke Parks, 1984

Reportedly, Brian's first exposure to the Beatles' February 1967 single "Strawberry Fields Forever" affected him. He heard the song while driving his car and pulled over to listen, commenting to his passenger Michael Vosse that the Beatles had "got there first". At the time, Brian was reportedly having doubts on whether Smile would still be received as a culturally relevant work among record-buyers and the contemporary rock audience. After the episode, Wilson rigorously continued work mostly on "Heroes and Villains". Throughout the first half of 1967, the album's release date was repeatedly postponed as Wilson tinkered with the recordings, experimenting with different takes and mixes, unable or unwilling to supply a completed version of the album.

In early March 1967, after gradually distancing himself from Wilson and the group, Van Dyke Parks left the project in the wake of signing a record deal with Warner Bros. Records so he could work on his debut album Song Cycle. As a result of Parks' quittance, Brian Wilson lost sight of the album's direction. He went back and forth considering many different ways to execute Smile, fluctuating between ideas such as a sound effects collage, a comedy album, and a "health food" album. In April 1967, due to "Heroes and Villains" being overdue, EMI released "Then I Kissed Her" as a single without the band's approval. The success of the relatively remedial single (which would ultimately best the chart placement of "Heroes and Villains") was another potential cause for Wilson abandoning the more adventurous roadmap of "Heroes and Villains" and settling for a more traditional song-structure.

Danny Hutton—who was a close friend of Brian Wilson at the time—has speculated that the number of possible variations of song edits became too overwhelming for Wilson. Other people have speculated that Wilson could not have finished the album simply because his ambitions were impossible to fulfill with pre-digital technology.

Aftermath

Smiley Smile

Brian blirted [sic] it out one evening at Bellagio, and later spoke about it several times in agonizing detail. He had expected that 'Heroes' would be greeted by Capitol as the work which put the Beach Boys on a creative par with the Beatles. All the adoration and promotional backup Capitol was giving the Beatles would also flow to his music because of Heroes, he thought.…The public bought the record in respectable but surely not wowy zowy numbers. For Brian, this was the ultimate failure. His surfing/car songs were the ones they loved the most. His musical growth, unlike that of Messrs. Lennon and McCartney, did not translate into commercial ascendancy or public glory.

A few weeks after Smile had been pronounced cancelled, Wilson finalized "Heroes and Villains" as the Beach Boys' next single. In the months leading up to its release, it had garnered a considerable amount of hype, with many publications referring to it as another recording milestone on par with the innovations present in "Good Vibrations". Reflective of the Beach Boys popular status, they had been voted as the world's number one vocal group within readers polls conducted by UK magazine NME; ahead of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. In June 1967, Wilson personally delivered an exclusive acetate of "Heroes and Villains" to radio station KHJ-AM by limousine. As Wilson excitedly offered the vinyl record for radio play, the DJ refused, citing program directing protocols, which Terry Melcher recalls "just about killed ".

Upon its release in July, "Heroes and Villains" disappointingly peaked at only number 12 on the Billboard pop charts, and was met with general confusion amongst underwhelming reviews. This included the seminal rock figure Jimi Hendrix negatively describing the single as a "psychedelic barbershop quartet" to NME. Wounded by the relative indifference to "Heroes and Villains," Wilson's emotional state began to plummet further.

The Beach Boys still needed to complete an LP record to fulfill their obligations to Capitol Records, so an album replacement was recorded throughout June and July. Following the stillbirth of Smile, Wilson retreated to his Beverly Hills house, and this became the venue for the recording of much of the Beach Boys' next album, Smiley Smile. Released that September, the album included newly stripped-down recordings of several Smile tracks. Besides its title and contents, the album was somewhat linked to Smile by carrying on the "humor" concept; much of the album is idiosyncratic, features scattered sounds of laughter, and includes at least one comedy skit: "She's Goin' Bald". The album was later described by brother and bandmate Carl Wilson as "a bunt instead of a grand-slam".

Smiley Smile was received with confusion by critics and was the group's lowest-selling album to date in the US, making only number 41 on the Billboard 200, although it fared considerably better in Britain, where it reached number nine on the album chart. Brian Wilson gradually retreated from the public eye and over the ensuing years became disabled by his mental health problems to fluctuating degrees. The Smile period is often reported as the pivotal episode in his decline, causing him to become tagged as one of the most notorious celebrity drug casualties of the rock era.

Bootlegs and reconstructions

After Smiley Smile, Carl Wilson would frequently revisit the session tapes, taking into mind the possibility of salvaging them for future release. In early 1972, the Beach Boys announced that they would be finishing the Smile album to follow up on the success of their Surf's Up album. By the end of the year, the idea was either abandoned or forgotten, with Brian refusing to participate in any further Smile-related reworkings. When asked about Smile in a 1976 interview, Brian said that he still felt an obligation to put out the album, and that it would be released "probably in a couple years." Later in the 1970s, Bruce Johnston said that an assembled release of Smile would be a "bad idea" commercially, and that it would be too difficult to market for the record-buying public.

By the beginning of the 1990s, Smile had earned its place as the most famous unreleased pop album, and was a focal point for bootleg recording makers and collectors. A 1988 proposed sequencing of the album by engineer Mark Linett eventually leaked to the public. The album had evidently also begun being passed around various musician circles.

In 1993, the five-CD boxed set Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of The Beach Boys was released containing almost thirty minutes of archival Smile material. These recordings made it clear that Smile had been much closer to completion than had previously been thought, and this prompted much excitement by fans over what additional songs might exist, and debate about how the songs fit into the Smile running order. There was hope that the box set would be followed by an official Smile release, but it failed to materialize.

With the emerging popularity of the Internet in the mid-1990s, the bootlegged Smile recordings became more widely available through a series of websites and "tape trees". A few websites actually offered full downloads of the tracks, and fan edits and arrangements started to appear. Beginning in 1997, the bootleg label Sea of Tunes (named after the Beach Boys' original publishing company) began releasing a series of CDs featuring high quality outtakes, session tracks and alternate recordings that ranged across the group's entire career. Among these was a three-CD set featuring over three hours of sessions for "Good Vibrations", and several multi-CD sets containing a significant number of the tracking, overdubbing and mixing sessions for Smile. Unofficial reconstructions of the album were often attempted by fans in order to "complete" the album and give the recordings a cohesive listening structure; for decades, fan-created playlists were the only way for the public to listen to an approximation of Smile as it would have been heard performed by the Beach Boys.

Brian Wilson Presents Smile

Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks revisited Smile with Brian's touring musicians in 2004, 37 years after its conception. First, in a series of concerts (debuting at London's Royal Festival Hall on February 20, 2004), then as the solo album Brian Wilson Presents Smile, released in September 2004. The album debuted at number 13 on the Billboard 200 chart, and later earned three Grammy nominations, winning Brian Wilson his first solo Grammy award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance ("Mrs. O'Leary's Cow"). In 2005, the album won graphic artist Mark London and Nonesuch/Elektra Records the 2005 ALEX award for Best Vinyl Package.

The Smile Sessions

On October 31, 2011 a compilation of the Smile recordings was released under the title The Smile Sessions. The recording features a disc which presents a listening experience mimicking the template of Brian Wilson Presents Smile. The Smile Sessions is available in various levels of comprehensiveness including a standard two-CD package, as well as a limited edition deluxe box set comprising 5 CDs, 2 LPs, 2 45 rpm singles, and a 60-page booklet. This compilation was released to mass acclaim and won the Best Historical Album award at the 55th Grammy Awards.

Reception

Acknowledgements

The theme of SMiLE assayed an inclusive history…through American folk memory, cowboy songs, comic songs, fairgrounds and cartoons, the revenant traces of doo-wop, barbershop, Sacred Harp and Shaker hymns, Native American and Hawaiian chants, the noises of daily life and those far echoes from sons of the pioneers, their riverrun from Plymouth Rock delivered under the similtude of a dream wherein is discovered the manner of his setting out, his dangerous journey and the destruction he wrought in the name of family, sons and holy ghosts.…Water flows, surf's up, feel flows: I could wish my days to be bound each to each by natural piety...

Various artists have cited Smile and its themes as a major influence. Kevin Shields of the American shoegaze band My Bloody Valentine is reported to have based some of the 2013 album MBV as being "more impressionistic and akin to Brian Wilson’s SMiLE than Loveless," and that "he recorded MBV in fits and starts, wanting to see what would happen when he put the parts together at the end." According to Kevin Barnes, of Montreal's album Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse was partially based on Smile. The album Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume One by the Olivia Tremor Control has been compared to Smile for its dichotomous vocal harmony pop and avant-garde tape manipulation. Composers for the 1994 Super Nintendo role-playing video game EarthBound cited Smile and related work as major influences on the game's soundtrack.

Writing a deeply-felt piece about Smile for The Wire in 2011, English musician and author David Toop cited 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 as some of the many contradictory templates he's heard "buried within Smile's music legacy." Pitchfork Media has described the album as a "rite of passage for students and pop music history," and adds "If you're wired a certain way, once you learn the Smile story, you long to hear the album that never was. It looms out there in imagination, an album that lends itself to storytelling and legend, like the aural equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster.…So you might start hunting down bootlegs, poring over the fragments, and finding competing edits and track sequences, which only feeds your desire to know what the 'real' Smile could have been."

Elvis Costello described a Smile piano demo of Surf's Up as akin to an original recording of Mozart in performance, and added "It’s such an amazing tune. The words are very much of the time, they sound beautiful when they’re sung—and quite of lot of that is true with the rest of the songs that come from this period, where obviously there was a stress and strain in realizing the music." Black Flag vocalist Henry Rollins has written enormous praise to Smile, calling the album "one of the best things you are likely to hear in all of your life. There are moments on Smile that are so astonishingly good you might find yourself just staring at your speakers in unguarded wonder, as I have." Don Was of Was (Not Was) has said, "In the fall of 1989, I was working with a band who turned me on to the bootlegged recordings of Brian Wilson’s legendary, aborted Smile sessions. Like a musical burning bush, these tapes awakened me to a higher consciousness in record making. I was amazed that one, single human could dream up this unprecedented and radically advanced approach to rock ‘n roll."

Tributes

Independent musicians and groups such as Ant-Bee, Melt-Banana, Jim O'Rourke, the Olivia Tremor Control, Adventures in Stereo, and Secret Chiefs 3 have all recorded cover versions of Smile tracks. Smiling Pets (1998) is a tribute album which largely focuses on various artists' interpretations of Smile-era recordings by the Beach Boys. Both albums Making God Smile: An Artists' Tribute to the Songs of Beach Boy Brian Wilson (2002) and Smiles, Vibes & Harmony: A Tribute To Brian Wilson (1991) features cover artwork reworked from the original Smile album artwork.

Dutch avant-garde group Palnickx paid homage to Smile on their 1996 rock-themed concept album The Psychedelic Years; the tracks "Phase Ten/Thirteen (Brian Wilson)" and "Phase Twelve (Fire/Rebuilding After the Fire)" feature multiple references to the project's themes, tracks, and legends. Weird Al Yankovic recorded a song on his 2006 album Straight Outta Lynwood modeled after Smile's aesthetic, entitled "Pancreas". Although not explicitly stated by the group, the 1999 album California by Mr. Bungle is somewhat reminiscent of Smile. Brian Wilson himself would later revisit Smile's themes and cut-up structure within his eponymous debut solo album Brian Wilson, which features the eight-minute-long psychedelic western saga "Rio Grande".

Scenes from the films Grace of My Heart and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story both feature homages to Smile. The latter contains the song "Black Sheep", a parody of Brian Wilson's music style composed by Van Dyke Parks. The albums sessions were dramatized in the made-for-television biopics Summer Dreams: The Story of the Beach Boys and The Beach Boys: An American Family. Portions of the Smile sessions will evidently also be dramatized in the upcoming Wilson biopic Love and Mercy, featuring Paul Dano as Brian Wilson and Max Schneider as Van Dyke Parks.

The 1993 fiction novel Glimpses by Lewis Shiner contains a chapter in which the protagonist travels back in time to November 1966 and helps Wilson complete Smile. References to Smile, its bootlegs, and the Beach Boys are also made in the 2006 novel Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta.

Notes

1. Of these, they were "Surf's Up", "Heroes and Villains", "Wonderful", "Cabin Essence" and "Wind Chimes". Wilson removed the sandbox installation once he realized his pets were using it as a litter box.
2. "The Act of Creation, by Arthur Koestler turned me on to some very special things…it explains that people attach their egos to their sense of humor before anything else. After I read it, I saw that trait in many people…a sense of humor is important to understanding what kind of person someone is. Studying metaphysics was also crucial, but Koestler’s book really was the big one for me." - Brian Wilson, 2005
3. Another appearing in demo versions of the song is the lyric "cornucopious" which can be heard as "corn-a-copious".
4. The idea is evident on the Smiley Smile track "She's Goin' Bald", a reworking of an earlier Smile track known as "He Gives Speeches".
5. He is said to have introduced Brian to marijuana toward the end of 1964 and LSD in the middle of 1965.
6. An example is the a cappella track "And Your Dream Comes True", which was recorded in sections and then carefully edited together to create the final song.
7. Another more personal reason for Wilson's preference was deafness in his right ear.
8. Smile was presented as three complete movements for Brian Wilson Presents Smile and The Smile Sessions. The first movement was realized as a representation of early Americana, from Plymouth Rock to the Old West, farmlands, and the industrial revolution. The second explored familial-themed concepts such as the human life cycle and familial generations. The third was the "Elements" suite.
9. This includes "Do You Like Worms?", "I'm In Great Shape", "Vega-Tables", "Love to Say Dada", "He Gives Speeches", "Cabin Essence", and "My Only Sunshine".
10. The idea of songs based on classical elements would later be revisited on "Cool, Cool Water", initially conceived as "Love to Say Dada".
11. For Brian Wilson Presents Smile, the other missing components were filled in by "Vega-Tables" (Earth) and "Wind Chimes" (Air). "Love to Say Dada" lost its childhood themed origin and was instead repurposed as "In Blue Hawaii" (Water).
12. "Holidays" was re-recorded with vocals for Brian Wilson Presents Smile as "On A Holiday" in 2004.
13. It was later released as the B-side to the 1967 "Heroes and Villains" single.
14. Of these, instrumental tracks labelled "I Don't Know" (by Dennis Wilson) and "Tune X" (by Carl Wilson) have survived.
15. Among these include "Brian Falls Into A Piano", "Brian Falls into a Microphone", "Moaning Laughing", and "Underwater Chant".
16. “This is by far the best thing we’ve ever done! Everything - the music, lyrics, singing, background - everything is perfect." - Al Jardine
17. " A new improvement of Brian’s capacities in this job. Once again he knows exactly what we can and what we can’t. There’s a lot of things happening on the record just like ‘Good Vibrations’…The flip is incredible. The title is ’You’re Welcome’. No other lyrics. I don’t know how Brian did it, but there’s no accompaniment. ‘Heroes and Villains’ is going to be released as the first single on our new label, Brothers Records…We are finishing it now." - Mike Love
18. “I’ve got some tapes at home of the new tracks to be on the ‘Smile’ LP which would blow your mind. All the ideas are new and Brian is coming up with fantastic ideas all the time.” - Bruce Johnston
19. The show was hosted by Leonard Bernstein, but it was the show's producer, David Oppenheim, who expressed his admiration for the song through voice-over, describing it as "poetic, beautiful even in its obscurity. 'Surf's Up' is 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."
20. Within these ads, the album had been compared as an artistic achievement to the films Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, both directed by famed auteur Orson Welles.
21. "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!"
22. Recording for Smile began in August 1966 and continued in earnest until mid-December. Conflicts arose around this time, temporarily halting work on the album, although sessions resumed in January and continued through the first few months of 1967.
23. Wilson exhibited varying signs of poor mental health before this point, notably at the end of 1964 where he suffered a nervous breakdown on a flight to Houston. He had also begun experiencing auditory hallucinations as early as 1965.
24. Wilson had already developed an enduring obsession with the music of Phil Spector upon hearing the song "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes a few years earlier. During the Smile era, he would say, "Spector started the whole thing. He was the first one to use the studio.…I heard that song three and a half years ago and I knew that it was between him and me. I knew exactly where he was at and now I've gone beyond him."
25. After being reminded several years later of Love's recent self-proclaimed love for the material, Parks reportedly stated laughingly, "I'm just incredulous. I can't believe that he's an enthusiast. I wouldn't condemn him if it took him some time to come to that conclusion. I'll just say that they have an expression in Texas that goes along with such a delayed reaction and that is: he's a little slow out of the shoot [sic]. All hat and no cowboy."
26. 2011 statements made by Parks taken from his website: "Certainly, I did walk away from Smile. Yet, I am astonished that Brian has been led into a 'The 50th Reunion Album/Tour'. It's a transparent worship of the God of Mammon. I comment only to combat any doubt that Mike Love delayed the release of Smile by 40 years purely out of a mislaid jealousy. Smile was an obviously good work." "Yet, revising facts isn't necessary for the progress of profit. I sure wish Brian were here to weigh in."
27. "There's tracks on the box set that represent not a great lost album but the worst times we ever went through. I listen to them and I don't feel any joy, I feel uncomfortable, I can hear Brian disintegrating. The music was cool but it's always tinged with the reality of making it. Brian degraded us, made us lay down for hours and make barnyard noises, demoralised us, freaked out. I can't tell you a lot of it, it's really fucked up. He thought it was hilarious, he was stoned and laughing. We hated him then because we didn't really know what was happening to him." Bruce Johnston, 1993
28. The statement "Don't fuck with the formula" is often attributed to Mike Love speaking to Brian Wilson during 1966 recording sessions for either Pet Sounds or Smile. The 1971 article (written by Tom Nolan) is the earliest known use of the phrase being seen in print. The quote itself was not referenced to have actually been said by any of the Beach Boys, nor by anybody in particular.
29. On the December 15 vocal sessions for "Surf's Up" and "Wonderful", the group was filmed by CBS which was reported to have went "very badly". Although there were more Smile sessions (on December 23, January 9, and January 23), work on the major tracks effectively stopped after December 15.
30. Later elaborating on his decision to leave, Parks noted in 2013, “Brian’s passion for drugs was overwhelming to me, and that’s why I left the project when I did. It was a little too much to be of real practical value and would lead to destruction. Of course, it had a great deal to do with his psychological collapse."
31. In the 1980s, Carl Wilson stated "Brian ran into all kinds of problems on Smile. He just couldn’t find the right direction to finish it." Bruce Johnston said "It was almost like he was climbing Mount Everest, and he was getting more boulders hanging on his back and snow coming down on him while he was trying to finish, and finally he just didn't finish it."
32. Mike Love expressed to New Musical Express, “The record company didn't even have the decency to put out one of Brian’s own compositions. The reason for the hold up with a new single has simply been that we wanted to give our public the best and the best isn't ready yet.”
33. "It's almost like when you hear a commercial ten times, and all of a sudden you start humming it, and you don't even know if you like it or not, because you've heard it so many times you can't even judge…He heard them so many times…He lost that ability of the 'freshness' to know which part should go where…He was in these puzzles of putting the songs together.…Because of the outside pressure and being confused on what to do with these series of pocket symphony parts that he had, I think there was a moment where he just threw up his hands and said 'the time has passed,' which it hadn't been but in his head."
34. The Smile Sessions audio engineer and compiler Mark Linett said, "In 1966, meant physically cutting pieces of tape and sticking them back together—which is how all editing was done in those days—but it was a very time-consuming and labor-intensive process, and most importantly made it very hard to experiment with the infinite number of possible ways you could assemble this puzzle."
35. A portion of "Workshop" was recycled for the closing of the 1969 single "Do It Again". The Beach Boys also completed the tracks "Our Prayer" and "Cabin Essence" for their 20/20 album. A "Vega-Tables" outtakes was included on Wild Honey as "Mama Says". A section of "Child Is Father of the Man" appears in "Little Bird" for Friends.
36. "But in 1972, Carl Wilson and Desper were like, "Let's get this stuff together." They got going on it, and Brian put a stop to it."
37. "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. It’s the kind of music you almost need a Ford Foundation grant to make. It was really a clever album, would be important for Brian artistically. If you put that album all together, there would be an incredible artistic value…but for keeping a band alive, no.”
38. The second disc of the set including versions of several unreleased Smile tracks, an alternate version of "Heroes and Villains" and numerous linking segments featuring the "Heroes and Villains" theme, plus a bare-bones piano and vocal demo of "Surf's Up". Never-before-released tracks included "Do You Like Worms?", "I Love To Say Da Da"; the Smile versions of "Wonderful", "Wind Chimes", "Vegetables"; sessions highlights of "Surf's Up", "Cabinessence"; and some erroneously titled "Heroes and Villains" outtakes. Their orders were sequenced by David Leaf.
39. One of the most popular of which, Purple Chick presents: The Beach Boys Smile, was an online mix tape assembled shortly after Wilson began performing the Smile material in 2004. The mix combined bootlegged 1960s Smile sessions with recordings from Brian Wilson's finished 2004 solo album.

References

1. ^ Richardson, Mark (November 2 2011). "The Smile Sessions review". Pitchfork. Retrieved 16 July 2013. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
2. ^ Leone, Dominique. "Brian Wilson: Smile". Pitchfork. Pitchfork. Retrieved June 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
3. ^ Toop, David (November 2011). "The SMiLE Sessions". The Wire (333).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
4. ^ "Ear Candy Mag interview with Brian Wilson (10-16-04)".
5. ^ Was, Don. "1995 liner notes". I Just Wasnt Made For These Times album.
6. "The Smile Sessions - The Beach Boys". Retrieved 11 November 2011.
7. "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. November 18, 2003. Retrieved June 10, 2012.
8. ^ Alyssa Toomey and Rosemary Brennan (February 10, 2013). "2013 Grammy Awards Winners: The Complete List". E!. Retrieved April 12, 2013.
9. "Good Vibrations: The AllMusic Blog". Retrieved 17 June 2013.
10. http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/audio-van-dyke-parks-part-3-1993 Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 16 June 1993
11. Richardson, Derk (June 28, 2011). "Wilson's Smile / Brian Wilson finally finishes his 'teenage symphony to God'". The San Francisco Chronicle.
12. "Brian Wilson". Melody Maker. October 8, 1966. p. 7.
13. ^ Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of Smile, 2004
14. Parks, Van Dyke (January 12 2006). "IN RESPONSE TO: A Lost Pop Symphony from the September 22, 2005 issue". The New York Review of Books. nybooks.com. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
15. ^ Brown, Ethan. "Influences: Brian Wilson, The lost Beach Boy's favorite things—Phil Spector, Arthur Koestler, and Celine Dion's legs". New York Magazine. Retrieved June 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help) August 13, 2005
16. ^ Nolan, Tom (October 28, 1971). "The Beach Boys: A California Saga". Rolling Stone (94). {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
18. ^ Siegel, Jules (1967). "Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!". Cheetah (1). {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
19. "Jazz fusion". Allmusic. Allmusic.
20. "The 50 Greatest Beach Boys Songs". Mojo Magazine. 2012. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
21. Bell, Matt (2004). "The Resurrection of Brian Wilson's Smile". Sound on Sound. soundonsound.com. Retrieved 16 July 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
22. ^ The Smile Sessions, 2011 liner notes, session tracks, and online "webisodes" (http://www.youtube.com/user/BeachBoys/).
23. ^ Alpert, Neal. "That Music Was Actually Created". Gadfly. Gadfly Online. Retrieved 16 July 2013.
24. New Music Express. December 17, 1966. {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
25. ^ Domenic, Priore (1995). Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile!. California: Last Gasp. ISBN 0867194170.
26. New Music Express. May 27, 1967. {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
27. Altham, Keith. "The Beach Boys: 'Don't you just love people?' – a classic interview from the vaults". Rock's Backpages. The Guardian.
28. Wilson, Brian (December 17, 1966). "Vibrations—Brian Wilson Style" (PDF). KRLA Beat. Retrieved June 2013. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
29. Beets, Greg (July 21, 2000). "Review: Pet Sounds: Fifteen Minutes With Brian Wilson". Nick Barbaro. Retrieved June 22, 2013.
30. ^ Carlin, Peter Ames (2007). Catch a wave : the rise, fall & redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson. Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale. ISBN 1594867496. {{cite book}}: no-break space character in |title= at position 13 (help)
31. ^ Endless Harmony: The Beach Boys Story. 1998.
32. Brian Wilson Interview Rare 1976 part 2 on YouTube
33. ^ Holdship, Bill (2004). MOJO magazine. {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
34. Phil Gallo, The Set List blog on variety.com, January 16, 2009 via the Internet Archive. Retrieved 20 December 2011 Quote: "Wilson offered a number of observations that might surprise fans. The top 10 disclosures: 1. "Pet Sounds" was named because of the initials P.S., which stands for Phil Spector"
35. Brian Wilson - The Lowdown Audio CD (2011)
36. New Musical Express (January 7, 1967). "Mike Love interview".
37. ^ CBS Sunday Morning, 2012 CBS Sunday Morning - The Beach Boys 50th Anniversary on YouTube
38. Brian Wilson: I Just Wasn't Made for These Times
39. ^ Parks, Van Dyke. "'Twas Brillig: Van Dyke Parks answers the general inquisition (viz "author" Mike Eder et al) on the Beach Boys' reunion and Smile". Bananastan. Retrieved June 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
40. "Letters". MOJO magazine. Feb 2005. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
41. Petridis, Alexis. "The astonishing genius of Brian Wilson". The Guardian. The Guardian. Retrieved June 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
42. ^ Three Dog Night's Danny Hutton on Brian Wilson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqY-LLP8idM
43. Holdship, Bill (1993). MOJO magazine (2). {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
44. Interview with Bob Claster, 1984.
45. ^ Jack Rieley's comments & Surf's Up
46. Kozlowski, Carl (February 21 2013). "The man behind the music". Retrieved 16 July 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
47. The Beach Boys: An American Band, 1985
48. "Beach Boys Think This Too Dated". New Musical Express: 10. 7. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= and |year= / |date= mismatch (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
49. "NME Awards History". Nme.com. Retrieved 2013-07-03.
50. Petridis, Alexis (Thursday 27 October 2011). "The Beach Boys: The Smile Sessions – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 June 2013. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
51. "Smiley Smile review".Archived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine
52. Felton, David (November 4, 1976). "The Healing of Brother Brian: The Rolling Stone Interview With the Beach Boys". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 16 July 2013. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
53. ^ Leaf, David (1978). The Beach Boys and the California myth (1 ed.). New York: Grosset & Dunlap.
54. BeachBoys.com (unofficial website) - Rarities: Sea of Tunes III
55. "Purple Chick presents: The Beach Boys Smile - a reconstruction Review by Ronnie". Ear Candy Mag. Retrieved June 2013. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
56. "Beach Boys' 'Smile Sessions' Bumped to August 9 Street Date". Retrieved 10 August 2011.
57. Gleason, Paul. "My Bloody Valentine's "mbv" Draws Comparisons to Brian Wilson's "SMiLE" (Album Review) - See more at: http://www.rockcellarmagazine.com/2013/02/06/my-bloody-valentines-m-b-v-draws-comparisons-to-brian-wilsons-smile-album-review/#sthash.WVhSbDxC.dpuf". Rock Cellar Magazine. Retrieved June 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); External link in |title= (help)
58. Labate, Steve. "The complete Paste interview". Paste.
59. Ankeny, Jason. "Black Foliage: Animation Music, Vol. 1". AllMusic. Retrieved 29 June 2013.
60. http://www.1101.com/MOTHER_music/index.html (translation: http://www.artcorekirbies.fr/perso/mother/suzutana/)
61. Henry Rollins. "Henry Rollins: The Column! The Beach Boys' SMiLE: Even Better than Advertised". LA Weekly.
62. "Smiling Pets review". Web of Mimicry.
63. Couture, François. "The Psychedelic Years". Allmusic.
64. "NME Album Reviews - California". nme.com. December 7, 1999. Retrieved August 22, 2012.
65. Matthew, Matthew. "Rio Grande review". Allmusic. Allmusic.

Further reading

• Siegel, Jules (October 17, 1967). "Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!". Cheetah (1). {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Priore, Domenic (1988). Look, Listen, Vibrate, Smile: The Book about the Mysterious Beach Boys Album. Surfin' Colours Hollywood. p. 264.
• Priore, Domenic (2005). Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece. London: Sanctuary. ISBN 1860746276.
• Nolan, Tom (October 28, 1971). "The Beach Boys: A California Saga". Rolling Stone (94). {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)

Documentaries

• Leaf, David (Director) (October 5, 2004). Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of 'Smile'.

External links

• The Beach Boys An Introduction to "SMiLE Sessions" on YouTube
• Rockument-Beach Boy's Smile Sessions with commentary and links to music
• "Heroes and Villains" video archive at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
• Stylus Magazine article
• Smiley Smile - fan site with message board
• Sound on Sound's "The Resurrection of Brian Wilson's Smile"
• An interview with Smile historian Domenic Priore
• Background information and essays on the making of

• Pages with empty short description
• Concept albums
• The Beach Boys albums
• Psychedelic rock albums
• Psychedelic pop albums
• Experimental rock albums
• Unreleased albums
• Baroque pop albums
• English-language albums
• Capitol Records albums
• Albums produced by Brian Wilson