Smile 20 years on
I can’t remember exactly when it was but I’m guessing the start of December 2003, when we released our EP with Wayward Song on it, we had a review that overshot a little bit. Somebody described the Earlies as being a “tantalising glimpse of what Smile might sound like if it were released in 2004”. That was roughly the angle, I could find it somewhere in here in a cupboard under a broken synth. I’m not going to pretend the press clippings got thrown out during the long journey from Barrowford to Clitheroe, they’re here somewhere but I’m not going to start rooting. It was the kind of flattery that you know is unwarranted hyperbole but you still can’t help it affecting you. Some privately held notion of where you’d like people to sit your album, “I know we’re not making music like Smile but other people think we’re that good…”
Anyway, Brian proper pissed on our chips when he went and released Smile in 2004. Good for everybody really, difficult for Brian himself but it stopped everybody on our bus from getting carried away with themselves so that must’ve been good. It was February the 20th 2004 when Brian presented Smile for the first time at the Royal Festival Hall. I didn’t make it till the 21st but I feel like I can still legitimately say I was there, albeit for the second performance where everybody was relaxing into it a bit. My housemate Rich found out about it and got a stack of tickets. He was an early internet user, or earlier than me which is what counts here. Nicky, Richard and Sara came along with us. We all got emotional, drunk and emotional with possibly a bit of jet lag thrown in from the Texas trip. It was so good but even if it hadn’t been the evening would’ve still worked, carried forward with the momentum of thousands of people’s goodwill towards this fragile beautiful soul and the battle that had been quietly raging within him for decades. The band were truly phenomenal, just a collection of utterly devoted Beach Boys enthusiasts with boundless abilities. I think it inspired us but it definitely popped us neatly back in our place.
They released an album of it later in the year, Brian Wilson presents Smile.
I loved it at the time as a perfect document of the perfect evening but I thought it’d be nice to revisit it this week and see how it holds up. Unfortunately for this album but fortunately for Smile fans the Smile Sessions was released in 2011 allowing some direct comparisons between what Brian’s band pulled off and what was happening in the studio in 1967.
The 2004 version is surprisingly good. It’s produced with the right kind of attitude, the band sing and play perfectly, it doesn’t have some awful posh drum sound with domineering hi-hats and it isn’t full of regrettable keyboard choices. Still, the things that make the Smile Sessions sound better are worth dwelling on. The most striking and forgivable is the difference in Brian’s voice, in 2004 it’s a broken and wearied instrument being gamely coached along and shadowed by Jeff Foskett, who pretty much doubles him and takes all the falsetto parts. There’s nothing wrong with age and experience showing in a voice but 60s Brian really did soar. “Voice of an Angel” is thrown about as recklessly as “genius” when describing the abilities of earnest nobodies who can just about hold a tune, but if the falsetto of Brian Wilson in his 20s isn’t angelic then I’ve been mixed up about what angels sound like. They probably sound like Lee from Blue.
The difference that I can’t get over when I listen to these two artifacts now is in the harmony vocals. Harmony singing is strange and magical, a good blend is rare and a blend like the one the Beach Boys had is sacred. If you listen to the 2004 version of Our Prayer you hear a group of truly amazing separate singers all nailing their parts perfectly and making a wonderful sound that is almost impossible to criticise. But to hear the Beach Boys sing the same parts is like hearing them played on one perfectly balanced and tuned cosmic instrument tethered to one set of lungs and one mind. It turns out some of you being blood relatives and all of you growing up together as musicians and human beings makes a difference. A shared world of formative experiences, musical vocabulary and shorthand. It’s a difference that isn’t going to trouble many people, if you’re the kind of person who cares to listen to either version you’re no idiot and you’re already in a minority of thinking listeners. Once you’re locked into what a difference that blend makes though you can’t take your ears off it. Singing harmony in a group like that must be the most addictive of spiritual experiences. Even the fact that Mike Love is in the room grimacing at you wouldn’t kill it.
Kurt Vonnegut once said that the Beatles were proof that God exists, he was saying it for laughs as a humanist. As a fellow humanist I’ll agree with that and throw the Beach Boys blend in as a second proof. They say God works in mysterious ways, I think they mean when he’s making ticks, wasps, hurricanes and malaria. These things make him seem like a slippery and confusing character. When he stops fucking around and concentrates on sprinkling magic into music I like him. Sorry Him.
It saddened me to hear of Melinda Wilson passing the other week. You would never have looked at Brian in 2004 and think that he’d outlast his younger wife. But then you’d never have looked at Brian lying in bed all day, weighing 20 stone in the 1970s and thought that he’d outlast his younger, more vital brothers. Yet here we are in 2024 and he soldiers on. I hope they keep him as happy as he can be for what remains.