After the Beach Boys released their seminal "Pet Sounds" album, the main songwriter in the band, Brian Wilson, set about making the "Smile" album in 1966 which was intended to be pop music’s crowning masterwork. The album however was never completed for a number of reasons-the main being poor Brian’s spiralling drug use and consequent mental health problems.
According to pop music folklore, after hearing "Sergeant Pepper..", Brian felt he’d been beaten to the post in creating pop music’s yardstick and gave up altogether. Thus the Smile project was abandoned altogether and never realised. As a result Smile has become perhaps THE unreleased album. Dozens upon dozens of unofficial bootlegs have since been made available and so Beach Boys obsessives have been able to get a taster of what the album may have sounded like.
So tonight in London a score, I hoped, would be settled. The Smile album…the holy grail of pop was to be presented to us well over thirty years on, as it was intended originally to be. Brian and an entourage of no fewer than sixteen other musicians appear. A rapturous applause ensues and audience members that sound like Austin Powers keep shouting: “We love you Brian!”. They continue to shout this between every single song.
Some small talk ensues with the band members about what they had for lunch that day…a chill goes up my spine: is it the realisation that I’m in the presence of a musical genius or the cold realisation that I’m about to see a man with session musicians half of his age about to do a tribute to what he used to be?
Without further ado the opening song ‘Our Prayer’ is sung. This is then followed by ‘Heroes and Villains’, and the tingles keep going up the spine…so far so good then…then the rest of the set is a scatter-dash best of the Beach Boy’s including: ’California Girls’, ‘Good Timing’ and ‘God Only Knows’ being thrown into the fray. But what happened to the Smile songs? That was what I came to hear dude….
Brian, the premier living acid casualty, presents each song like nobodies ever heard it before. He sings enthusiastically, waves his hand around to the songs like he’s a slightly manic musical magician, casting pure magic and occasionally he plays a bit of piano or guitar. Anyone that’s seen one of the many films or television documentaries about the Beach Boys would have to have a heart of stone not to want to hug the guy.
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After something like an hour the set closes, Brian and his entourage leave the stage. I head off to the bar for a pint of Guinness not knowing quite what to think, I mean I came to hear the Smile album as it was intended to be….
The second set follows with a number of songs from the Smile session being performed, along with some late period Beach Boys plus some of Brian’s solo work.
Brian shows some of his eccentricities by walking down the stairs backwards before the encore. We are then treated to a few more hits before the closing effort reveals itself as a lesser-known track off one of the solo albums.
All-in-all around a dozen songs are performed from Smile although I can’t help but feel under-whelmed since my own favourite tracks aren’t shown the light of day. The songs from Smile that are performed generally sound too goofy and wacky to be considered having the potential to be a true pop masterwork although there are exceptions. The prime example ‘Good Vibrations’, penned during the Smile period alone may be considered the best pop song ever written.
Perhaps my expectations were too high although I suspect a lot of people here tonight didn’t quite hear what they expected. But quite simply Brian wrote some of the best pop songs ever written and perhaps for that reason alone the audience are happy to see him tonight.
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