“Kill Your Idols” looks like a neat book!
I bought this album on the day it was released. The music on it wasn’t a surprise to me, because I have all the bits and pieces of sessions that have managed to escape over the years, so I was already intimately familiar with it.
Halfway through “Heroes And Villains”, I had tears running down my face, and the world’s biggest smile on my face. Brian didn’t just re-record the album and put it out, he recreated the original sessions in the most excruciating detail, but with other people. It sounds exactly like the original recordings. They nailed it. Un-freaking-believable!
It’s not the most earth-shaking album, but it definitely goes in a different direction than The Beach Boys were travelling in. It’s not such a big deal now, as it is as different from anything on the charts now as it would have been then - but I can see why Capitol wasn’t interested in it at the time. Now watch, they’ll put out a Smile Sessions box set.
The first time I heard of Smile was when a friend of mine held up a copy on Monday and said “you have to buy this”. Trusting my friend’s taste, I went and bought it.
I’ve never been a fan of the Beach Boys so I came into this album expecting to be underwhelmed.
I had the exact opposite experience.
Since Tuesday I have listened to it about 10 times and it gets better with every listen. The first time through it was a mess, but like a symphonic work each individual element helps resolve the whole; as you listen deeper into the tracks you here echos of past songs and forshadowing of songs to come. The themes become clearer with subsequent listens and the end result is a masterpiece.
What does not become clear is the lyrical content. It’s dense, possibly meaningless stuff- but no matter, the music is worth it.
At times it reminds me of Sgt. Peppers (though Sgt. Peppers is a bit poppier) and at others of the Moody Blues during their peak (Lost Chord, Threshold of a Dream, Children’s Childrens’ Children). All in a good way. It scale and complexity is breathtaking and rewarding.
To add to fishbicycle comments: it is not an earthshattering album. Because Smile comes to us 40 years too late, we have heard works of this complexity before, but I still believe it deserves fair credit for being a masterwork.
That’s a big part of the reason why Brian never finished it—he couldn’t figure out how to fit it all together, so he just fussed over the pieces until he burned himself out.
I think I see where you’re coming from. The three “themes” (roughly: history of America; growing up & losing innocence; the four elements) are well-realized individually but I don’t see how they relate to each other, in anything but a purely formal (i.e., musical) way. That is to say, they seem to relate to each other through the way Brian combines musical themes and motifs from one into the others, but there’s no logical or narrative thread to take you through the entire piece. Or I don’t see one, at any rate.
Of course, the music is so good that it hardly matters. My disappointment over the original tracks remaining unreleased is pretty much gone. The new performances are so spot-on that, had they cleaned up and released the original Smile masters, they probably would’ve sounded just like this anyway. A phenomenal job for a phenomenal piece of music.
Actually, Pet Sounds was a response to Rubber Soul; Smile would’ve been Brian’s response to Revolver.
It’s beautiful. It made me smile, which I believe was Brian Wlson’s intention.
I went to see one of the Smile concerts in London this February, and enjoyed it a great deal.
I’m impressed that Van Dyke Parks’ lyrics have (in my opinion anyhow) stood the test of time. I also appreciate the way tht Brian’s ageing voice works with some of the songs - in particularly Surf’s Up needs to be sung by an older man, because it’s a song of evaluation.
I thought that the theme of losing innocence and the theme of America’s history paralleled each other - it’s a journey from innocence through self alienation (and alienation of the American from the land), middle age and self-awareness (and recognition of relationship with land and nature) out to a new sense of peace with the world in a new (blue) Hawai’i.