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So, pop history's most fabled sounds finally get their day in the sun. After 37 years, each day of which reinforced the legend of the music and its creator, the wait is over. Brian Wilson, take a bow. No, not for your pioneering
Brian, take that bow because SMiLE is finished. Wilson, of course, was the hit-making mastermind of the Beach Boys, the band that dominated the AM airwaves throughout the 60s with a harmony-rich sound we've come to identify as uniquely Californian. His take on rock n' roll was ebullient, yes, but it was also musically astute, laced with an unmistakable melancholy that seemed both personal and universal. In 1967, as a member of rock's elite fraternity of groundbreakers (among them Capital labelmates Lennon and McCartney, whose albums awed and challenged him) Wilson began moving in conceptual directions, saturating tape with complex vocal arrangements and studio orchestrations, then mixing, matching, and linking his sectional recordings like movie scenes. Heady stuff for a guy who wrote "Fun Fun Fun," especially when you consider his battle against the effects of parental abuse, mental illness and drug use. Within these climes, the mighty SMiLE was almost born. The album was to be Wilson's self-proclaimed "teenage symphony to God" - an existential, metaphysical, patchwork quilt of Americana sounds. His collaborator was Van Dyke Parks, a musician and lyricist with expansive ideas and a penchant for punning allusions. Together they aimed to out-Pepper the as-yet-unreleased Sgt. Pepper. The race was on, and Capital was licking its chops. However all was not well in Wilson's world. The pressures surrounding his creative pursuit made completion of Beach Boys project impossible. (By one account SMiLE was nearly eighty per cent done when Wilson scrapped it.) Chief among his obstacles was the resistance of Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston, and less so Brian's brothers Carl and Dennis Wilson the Beach Boys - who had grown comfortable with the sound of ka-ching and were not eager to jeopardize their fortunes with an untested art project. Wilson - once Midas now Merlin - aborted the sessions. In subsequent years SMiLE songs and fragments ("Surf's Up," "Cabin Essence," "Heroes and Villains," "Vegetables," et al) surfaced on myriad Beach Boys albums, but the magic of Wilson's conceptual whole had been lost. Until now (kinda, sorta). With the help of his current band, who are instrumental in the composer's rescue and music's resurrection, SMiLE has been completed - newly recorded and assembled as a three-part suite complete with a symphony orchestra. After nearly four decades, Wilson and his followers can now call it a wrap. He plans to celebrate the achievement by performing the album live; a month-long American tour begins at the end of September. With his publicist present, and fighting a phone connection unsympathetic to the legendary deafness in his left ear, Wilson, ever the enthusiast, told VH1 about shrugging off the bootleggers, listening to Phil Spector, and putting the American mystique into sound. VH1: Brian, do you have a sense of triumph or redemption? Brian Wilson: I think we kicked ass over the original version. I think the musicianship was far superior to the old musicians. VH1: Was the SMiLE music in your head all these years? Or were you able to set it aside? BW: My head was filled with drugs - LSD, marijuana, amphetamines - and our heads [the Beach Boys'] got into a bad place and we realized that the music was real dense and we shelved the tapes. Every once in a while I'd think about it, but for the most part I put it out of my head. VH1: Did it bug you that tons of bootlegs exist of all your sessions? BW: It didn't bug me. I just wondered why the hell they did that. But no, I wasn't bugged. VH1: What about all those SMiLE experts who claimed to know more about what you were thinking than you did? BW: I don't think anyone knows what's inside my head. VH1: Did the project trigger any unpleasant memories for you? BW: When we started, yeah, there were a few moments, but then my wife said, "Its time to present the music to the world." VH1: Leonard Bernstein said that "Surf's Up" was too complex to get the first time around. I guess he meant Van Dyke's lyrics. Are there any of Van Dyke's words that you still wrestle with? BW: Van Dyke's lyrics are poetic and avant-garde. Nothing of his really perplexes me. Except maybe "Surf's Up." VH1: [Rock journalist] Tim White wrote about your ancestors from Kansas, and how they migrated west. SMiLE has a powerful thread of Americana running through it. Have you ever felt that your music fulfills some kind of family destiny? BW: I don't know. SMiLE is a chronological tale of the settling of the west. It's an overview of the American mystique, of the mood of the American spirit. VH1: Do you have any idea whether Mike or Al or Bruce have heard this? BW: No idea. No one I know sent it to them. If they want to hear it they can buy it on September 28. VH1: What would Carl or Dennis say about this? BW: I've never thought about that. I think they would like it because they liked me and my music - if they were alive today. VH1: It seems that you've overcome your fear of performing. That true? BW: I get nervous an hour before each show but I sit down and pull myself together. I think about music. Do you ever listen to Phil Spector? VH1: Yeah, sure. I know that you love "Be My Baby," but I've always been partial to "Walking in the Rain." BW: I know that one. I love it, too . [Sings] "I want him/I need him..." VH1: Have you spoken to Spector recently? BW: I haven't spoken to him in 20 years. VH1: It seems that he's in hot water these days. BW: I heard some rumors about that. VH1: One last question: Do you ever get tired of people saying, "Your music changed my life." BW: It happened just last night. A guy in a restaurant said that and asked me to sign his guitar. I signed it. A guitar. Can you believe that?
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