Ziggy
13th September 2004, 02:56
Rebuilding Brian Wilson's Smile
September 12, 2004
By BERNARD WEINRAUB
LOS ANGELES
THIRTY-SEVEN years ago, Brian Wilson nearly completed what
he hoped would be his masterwork, an album called "Smile"
that he described as "a teenage symphony to God." This
year, in a way, he finished it.
Mr. Wilson, the mastermind of the Beach Boys, had
envisioned an album that would merge pop hooks and
elaborately composed interludes, with allusive lyrics by
Van Dyke Parks that encompassed romance, American history
and the alchemical elements.
"Smile" was to be even more ambitious than Mr. Wilson's
"Pet Sounds," the intricately orchestrated, structurally
far-reaching 1966 album that the Beatles tried to top with
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." More than 400,000
"Smile" album covers were printed.
But "Smile" turned into a nightmare for Mr. Wilson, who was
spiraling toward a nervous breakdown and struggling with
drugs and with personal demons that would envelop him for
decades. The other members of the Beach Boys had grown
dubious about the commercial prospects of the increasingly
complex music and lyrics. There was rancor from Mr.
Wilson's father, Murry, a frustrated musician who had
beaten him during his childhood, and there were legal
battles with the Beach Boys' label, Capitol Records. Mr.
Wilson had grown reclusive and increasingly bizarre: he
ordered eight truckloads of beach sand dumped around his
piano at home so he could wiggle his toes in it for
inspiration.
After 85 recording sessions, including more than two dozen
for the song "Heroes and Villains" alone, Mr. Wilson
abandoned "Smile," and it turned into the most famous
unheard album in pop history. "I thought it was too weird,
I thought it was too druggie influenced, I thought the
audience wouldn't get it," Mr. Wilson said in an interview.
What remains of the original "Smile" are songs that
appeared in different versions on subsequent Beach Boys
albums - among them "Good Vibrations," "Heroes and
Villains," "Surf's Up," "Cabinessence" and "Wind Chimes" -
and fragments of session tapes. But after reworking "Pet
Sounds" for a triumphant concert tour in 2000, Mr. Wilson
decided to return to "Smile."
This year, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Parks, a 10-piece band and
additional strings and horns resurrected the album from
shards and memories. After performing a live version in
concert in Europe, they returned to the studio to make an
entirely new recording of "Smile": 17 intricate,
multifaceted, enigmatic songs, grouped into three suites,
sometimes linked by recurring themes. The album will be
released by Nonesuch on Sept. 28, and Mr. Wilson will
perform a concert version of "Smile" on a monthlong
American tour that begins on Sept. 30 in Minneapolis and
reaches Carnegie Hall on Oct. 12 and 13.
The European reviews were rapturous. "The music echoed
everything from Philip Glass to Kurt Weill to Chuck Berry,"
a reviewer wrote in The Daily Telegraph when "Smile" was
performed in London. "Leonard Bernstein said Brian Wilson
was one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. He
was not wrong." A critic for the Guardian referred to "the
groundbreaking complexity and sophistication" of "Smile,"
saying that the concert "made it seem like the grandest of
American symphonies."
Mr. Wilson's fragility was clear at the concerts - he
sometimes needs help getting on and off the stage - and it
is evident in conversations with him. He is 62, and the
years of mental illness and drugs have left him shaky at
times, a tall, hefty man with sad, hollow eyes. Sitting
upright and tense in the library of his home in a gated
community atop Beverly Hills, or talking on the telephone,
Mr. Wilson often speaks in terse sentences and
monosyllables. His speech is occasionally slurred; he
sometimes seems lost in his own world. At other times, he
speaks strongly and comfortably.
"I love life," he said. "The odds were against me, of
course."
Mr. Wilson has said that he wanted to release "Smile" as a
legacy before he died, to close the most painful chapter in
his troubled life.
"It was finally ready to be finished, ready to be
accepted," he said. "We thought it was too advanced for
people at that time. We think people are now ready to
understand where it was coming from. Back then, no one was
ready for it."
Echoing Mr. Wilson, his friend and collaborator, Mr. Parks,
said: "There are intimations of mortality here, intimations
about the end of his performing cycle. With these
intimations, decisions become profoundly more difficult.
"I get the impression that Brian knew he was running out of
time and if he was going to present the work he'd have to
make a decision to do it and no longer be embarrassed that
he had followed his own madness as a 24-year-old composer.
This is inexorably a highly personal move and a musical
move."
Mr. Wilson, whose personal life was a shambles from the
1960's to the 1980's, said that his wife of nine years,
Melinda Ledbetter, had given him a serenity that had long
eluded him. "She's inspired me," he said. "She's inspired
me to write music. My children inspire me."
Mr. Wilson and Ms. Ledbetter live quietly in Beverly Hills
with three young adopted children, on whom he dotes. (Mr.
Wilson also has two grown daughters from his first
marriage, Carnie and Wendy Wilson, who sing in the group
Wilson Phillips.)
Ms. Ledbetter, a one-time auto saleswoman, met Mr. Wilson
in 1986 when she sold him a Cadillac, what she calls "a
really ugly brown Seville," in a showroom in Santa Monica.
They dated sporadically and married in 1995. A friendly,
straightforward woman, Ms. Ledbetter said her husband's
severe emotional problems dated to his childhood and his
abusive father. Mr. Wilson is deaf in one ear, which may be
the result of childhood beatings.
"He was a very mean man; he'd beat me physically, but
mostly mentally he beat me," Mr. Wilson said of his father,
who died in 1973. "He was our manager when we started but
was so hard to live with that we fired him."
Ms. Ledbetter said: "Brian is mentally ill. He suffers from
depression and he was never treated - and when somebody is
mentally ill from that early on and it goes untreated, then
it makes it more difficult." It was only after doctors at
the University of California, Los Angeles, prescribed
antidepressants that Mr. Wilson began to improve.
In the 70's Mr. Wilson's first wife, Marilyn, hired a
Hollywood psychologist, Eugene Landy, to help him. Dr.
Landy lived with Mr. Wilson 24 hours a day and took over
his life, including business and music decisions; he even
became the beneficiary of Mr. Wilson's will. Band members
and relatives eventually filed suit. Dr. Landy lost his
license to practice psychology in California for at least
two years in 1989. In 1991, a judge put Mr. Wilson's
affairs under a court-appointed conservator.
Ms. Ledbetter described Mr. Wilson's career now as "one
step at a time."
Musicians have never stopped praising and echoing Mr.
Wilson's ambitious songs from the 1960's, even after he
withdrew from performing. But in the 1990's, Mr. Wilson
began overcoming his longtime stage fright. In 2000 he and
his new band performed "Pet Sounds," which had included
several of the Beach Boys' biggest hit singles - "Sloop
John B," "God Only Knows" and "Wouldn't It Be Nice" -
alongside Mr. Wilson's more convoluted and introspective
songs.
Mr. Wilson seems fully aware that his musical achievements
are widely appreciated. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and
Museum has described him as "one of the few undisputed
geniuses in popular music" and said that the Beach Boys
were "responsible for some of the most perfect harmonies
and gorgeous melodies in rock and roll history."
The group was founded in 1961 by Brian and his brothers,
Dennis and Carl Wilson, along with Mike Love, a cousin, and
Al Jardine, a friend. Although the Beach Boys' earliest
hits, in 1962 and 1963 - "Surfin' Safari," "Surfin' U.S.A,"
"Surfer Girl" - celebrated Southern California teenage
boys' obsessions with the beach and hot rods and pretty
blond girls, even back then Mr. Wilson was hardly a beach
boy. He didn't surf and disliked the beach.
By 1966, the Beach Boys had racked up nearly two dozen Top
40 hits, including three No. 1 songs: "I Get Around," "Help
Me Rhonda" and "Good Vibrations," all produced by Mr.
Wilson. By the 1970's he had already begun his steep
decline into drugs, after suffering a nervous breakdown.
Dennis Wilson drowned in 1983 while swimming off his boat
in Marina del Ray. Carl Wilson died of lung cancer in 1998.
Mike Love currently leads a touring Beach Boys group
unaffiliated with Mr. Wilson.
Earlier this year, Mr. Wilson released an album of new
songs, "Gettin' In Over My Head," with guest appearances
from Paul McCartney, Elton John and Eric Clapton; it
received mixed reviews. He says he plans to tour Australia
in December with "Smile" and then start working on a new
rock and roll album.
"I'm 62 but I feel like I'm 42," he said. "I wanted to
retire but I changed my mind. I can't help but make music
for people. I love to make people happy. I'm happier now
than I've ever been. I got standing ovations wherever I
went in Europe. I feel young. I feel happy. Isn't that
something?"
September 12, 2004
By BERNARD WEINRAUB
LOS ANGELES
THIRTY-SEVEN years ago, Brian Wilson nearly completed what
he hoped would be his masterwork, an album called "Smile"
that he described as "a teenage symphony to God." This
year, in a way, he finished it.
Mr. Wilson, the mastermind of the Beach Boys, had
envisioned an album that would merge pop hooks and
elaborately composed interludes, with allusive lyrics by
Van Dyke Parks that encompassed romance, American history
and the alchemical elements.
"Smile" was to be even more ambitious than Mr. Wilson's
"Pet Sounds," the intricately orchestrated, structurally
far-reaching 1966 album that the Beatles tried to top with
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." More than 400,000
"Smile" album covers were printed.
But "Smile" turned into a nightmare for Mr. Wilson, who was
spiraling toward a nervous breakdown and struggling with
drugs and with personal demons that would envelop him for
decades. The other members of the Beach Boys had grown
dubious about the commercial prospects of the increasingly
complex music and lyrics. There was rancor from Mr.
Wilson's father, Murry, a frustrated musician who had
beaten him during his childhood, and there were legal
battles with the Beach Boys' label, Capitol Records. Mr.
Wilson had grown reclusive and increasingly bizarre: he
ordered eight truckloads of beach sand dumped around his
piano at home so he could wiggle his toes in it for
inspiration.
After 85 recording sessions, including more than two dozen
for the song "Heroes and Villains" alone, Mr. Wilson
abandoned "Smile," and it turned into the most famous
unheard album in pop history. "I thought it was too weird,
I thought it was too druggie influenced, I thought the
audience wouldn't get it," Mr. Wilson said in an interview.
What remains of the original "Smile" are songs that
appeared in different versions on subsequent Beach Boys
albums - among them "Good Vibrations," "Heroes and
Villains," "Surf's Up," "Cabinessence" and "Wind Chimes" -
and fragments of session tapes. But after reworking "Pet
Sounds" for a triumphant concert tour in 2000, Mr. Wilson
decided to return to "Smile."
This year, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Parks, a 10-piece band and
additional strings and horns resurrected the album from
shards and memories. After performing a live version in
concert in Europe, they returned to the studio to make an
entirely new recording of "Smile": 17 intricate,
multifaceted, enigmatic songs, grouped into three suites,
sometimes linked by recurring themes. The album will be
released by Nonesuch on Sept. 28, and Mr. Wilson will
perform a concert version of "Smile" on a monthlong
American tour that begins on Sept. 30 in Minneapolis and
reaches Carnegie Hall on Oct. 12 and 13.
The European reviews were rapturous. "The music echoed
everything from Philip Glass to Kurt Weill to Chuck Berry,"
a reviewer wrote in The Daily Telegraph when "Smile" was
performed in London. "Leonard Bernstein said Brian Wilson
was one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. He
was not wrong." A critic for the Guardian referred to "the
groundbreaking complexity and sophistication" of "Smile,"
saying that the concert "made it seem like the grandest of
American symphonies."
Mr. Wilson's fragility was clear at the concerts - he
sometimes needs help getting on and off the stage - and it
is evident in conversations with him. He is 62, and the
years of mental illness and drugs have left him shaky at
times, a tall, hefty man with sad, hollow eyes. Sitting
upright and tense in the library of his home in a gated
community atop Beverly Hills, or talking on the telephone,
Mr. Wilson often speaks in terse sentences and
monosyllables. His speech is occasionally slurred; he
sometimes seems lost in his own world. At other times, he
speaks strongly and comfortably.
"I love life," he said. "The odds were against me, of
course."
Mr. Wilson has said that he wanted to release "Smile" as a
legacy before he died, to close the most painful chapter in
his troubled life.
"It was finally ready to be finished, ready to be
accepted," he said. "We thought it was too advanced for
people at that time. We think people are now ready to
understand where it was coming from. Back then, no one was
ready for it."
Echoing Mr. Wilson, his friend and collaborator, Mr. Parks,
said: "There are intimations of mortality here, intimations
about the end of his performing cycle. With these
intimations, decisions become profoundly more difficult.
"I get the impression that Brian knew he was running out of
time and if he was going to present the work he'd have to
make a decision to do it and no longer be embarrassed that
he had followed his own madness as a 24-year-old composer.
This is inexorably a highly personal move and a musical
move."
Mr. Wilson, whose personal life was a shambles from the
1960's to the 1980's, said that his wife of nine years,
Melinda Ledbetter, had given him a serenity that had long
eluded him. "She's inspired me," he said. "She's inspired
me to write music. My children inspire me."
Mr. Wilson and Ms. Ledbetter live quietly in Beverly Hills
with three young adopted children, on whom he dotes. (Mr.
Wilson also has two grown daughters from his first
marriage, Carnie and Wendy Wilson, who sing in the group
Wilson Phillips.)
Ms. Ledbetter, a one-time auto saleswoman, met Mr. Wilson
in 1986 when she sold him a Cadillac, what she calls "a
really ugly brown Seville," in a showroom in Santa Monica.
They dated sporadically and married in 1995. A friendly,
straightforward woman, Ms. Ledbetter said her husband's
severe emotional problems dated to his childhood and his
abusive father. Mr. Wilson is deaf in one ear, which may be
the result of childhood beatings.
"He was a very mean man; he'd beat me physically, but
mostly mentally he beat me," Mr. Wilson said of his father,
who died in 1973. "He was our manager when we started but
was so hard to live with that we fired him."
Ms. Ledbetter said: "Brian is mentally ill. He suffers from
depression and he was never treated - and when somebody is
mentally ill from that early on and it goes untreated, then
it makes it more difficult." It was only after doctors at
the University of California, Los Angeles, prescribed
antidepressants that Mr. Wilson began to improve.
In the 70's Mr. Wilson's first wife, Marilyn, hired a
Hollywood psychologist, Eugene Landy, to help him. Dr.
Landy lived with Mr. Wilson 24 hours a day and took over
his life, including business and music decisions; he even
became the beneficiary of Mr. Wilson's will. Band members
and relatives eventually filed suit. Dr. Landy lost his
license to practice psychology in California for at least
two years in 1989. In 1991, a judge put Mr. Wilson's
affairs under a court-appointed conservator.
Ms. Ledbetter described Mr. Wilson's career now as "one
step at a time."
Musicians have never stopped praising and echoing Mr.
Wilson's ambitious songs from the 1960's, even after he
withdrew from performing. But in the 1990's, Mr. Wilson
began overcoming his longtime stage fright. In 2000 he and
his new band performed "Pet Sounds," which had included
several of the Beach Boys' biggest hit singles - "Sloop
John B," "God Only Knows" and "Wouldn't It Be Nice" -
alongside Mr. Wilson's more convoluted and introspective
songs.
Mr. Wilson seems fully aware that his musical achievements
are widely appreciated. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and
Museum has described him as "one of the few undisputed
geniuses in popular music" and said that the Beach Boys
were "responsible for some of the most perfect harmonies
and gorgeous melodies in rock and roll history."
The group was founded in 1961 by Brian and his brothers,
Dennis and Carl Wilson, along with Mike Love, a cousin, and
Al Jardine, a friend. Although the Beach Boys' earliest
hits, in 1962 and 1963 - "Surfin' Safari," "Surfin' U.S.A,"
"Surfer Girl" - celebrated Southern California teenage
boys' obsessions with the beach and hot rods and pretty
blond girls, even back then Mr. Wilson was hardly a beach
boy. He didn't surf and disliked the beach.
By 1966, the Beach Boys had racked up nearly two dozen Top
40 hits, including three No. 1 songs: "I Get Around," "Help
Me Rhonda" and "Good Vibrations," all produced by Mr.
Wilson. By the 1970's he had already begun his steep
decline into drugs, after suffering a nervous breakdown.
Dennis Wilson drowned in 1983 while swimming off his boat
in Marina del Ray. Carl Wilson died of lung cancer in 1998.
Mike Love currently leads a touring Beach Boys group
unaffiliated with Mr. Wilson.
Earlier this year, Mr. Wilson released an album of new
songs, "Gettin' In Over My Head," with guest appearances
from Paul McCartney, Elton John and Eric Clapton; it
received mixed reviews. He says he plans to tour Australia
in December with "Smile" and then start working on a new
rock and roll album.
"I'm 62 but I feel like I'm 42," he said. "I wanted to
retire but I changed my mind. I can't help but make music
for people. I love to make people happy. I'm happier now
than I've ever been. I got standing ovations wherever I
went in Europe. I feel young. I feel happy. Isn't that
something?"