R.I.P. Brian Wilson (+ One More SMiLE Mix?)

I’ve been in a haze these last two weeks, because I lost someone very dear to me. I never had the privilege of meeting him personally, but I’ve known his name for close to a quarter century now, back when I could count my age in single digits. I never got to tell him he was one of my biggest heroes, but I’ve spent more time and “ink” praising his legacy than any other person who ever lived. Without question he was my favorite musician, the one who introduced me to “real music,” to 60s culture (from its innocence to its turbulence) including many other great artists associated with the Summer of Love and psychedelics. Without this man’s music, I wouldn’t be the person I am today; I wouldn’t have gotten into altered states of consciousness, new age spirituality, classic rock/sunshine pop, vinyl collecting, nor the preservation of lost media.

I’m referring of course to Brian Wilson: a self-made man of pure heart and undisputed talent, whose titles include: (1) the Leader of the Beach Boys, perhaps America’s greatest band, (2) Co-Founder of the Wall of Sound production techniques we mostly take for granted, (3) the Best Conductor the Wrecking Crew Musicians Ever Had, (4) the One-Man Hit Machine in his Freaking Twenties, (5) the Only Consistent, Worthy Rival whom the Beatles Ever “Feared*,” (6) the Divine Ear, Chosen Conduit of the Musica Universalis, (7) the Unsung Prophet of the Aquarian Age and (–as if all that wasn’t enough–) the man whose sonic journey from surfing tunes to teenage symphonies guided me through my own emotional, intellectual and spiritual development as an individual. Through the years, so outspoken was I of Brian’s genius, that friends and family members reached out specifically to offer condolences, knowing I’d take the news hard. Brian Wilson, flawed though he could be at times (as are we all), was too damn pure for this cruel world; he was a terminally naive soul who only wanted to share his gift with us and we (society) made that far more difficult for him that it ever should’ve been, to everyone’s detriment.

*ASIDE: And that’s without a George Martin to send unfinished demos to. Not that it’s a competition per se, but I think more casual music fans ought to appreciate the fact that when John Lennon couldn’t get a song like “Strawberry Fields Forever” to work, he’d kick it upstairs to a separate producer, who took two different takes in two different keys and somehow worked a miracle. Brian wrote his own melodies (and sometimes lyrics), could sing all the vocal parts single-handed if he wanted to, arranged compositions, directed musicians in the studio, and produced the final mix more or less by himself. I used to tell my skeptical friends (who respected the mop tops but thought the Beach Boys were “lame”) that while the Beatles may have been a better group than the ‘Boys overall, Brian was by far the most talented member of either band.

Honestly, after these past two weeks, I think I even undersold him in that conjecture. There’s a passion, a sincerity, a sense of yearning and angst in those Beach Boy recordings that you just don’t get from the Fab Four, who wrote great songs but often without much vulnerability. “Caroline No” was about Brian’s unrequited crush on Carol Mountain, “Surf’s Up” was about the need to make a better world for the sake of our children, told in impressionist poetry full of double entendres. The Beatles never knew any meter maid like “Lovely Rita” and the lyrics for “Mr Kite” were taken wholesale off an antique circus poster without any real purpose. I still love both, but Brian is just on a level of integrity all his own, someone who’d scrap a year’s worth of work when he couldn’t perfectly express the concepts he set out to do (SMiLE) where his competitors were more pragmatic with Sgt Pepper, abandoning the “band-in-disguise” concept after just two tracks when it became too time consuming to write around.

Basically, there are two celebrity deaths in my adult life that I can recall evoking genuine grief: Catherine Spaak and now Brian. With the former, I had only just become familiar with her body of work by complete chance, consuming and disseminating most of it over the course of ~17 months during COVID, and then like that she was no more. (The very day it happened, I recall having a dream about her too–it was such a weird surprise to wake up after that, re-check Spaak’s wiki page and see her referred to in the past tense!) The shock came from how coincidental it all was, the whirlwind of developing a huge celebrity crush just in time to be emotionally affected by her unexpected passing. With Brian, it’s the exact opposite: imagine “knowing” someone for so long, taking for granted that this “Beautiful Dreamer” who created the soundtrack to so many happy summers was (technically, sort of) just a drive or phone call away and now he’s not there anymore.

Realizing that this opportunity to meet my hero is finally over, it just makes me think of how many years Brian was here all along, despite such unfair and implausible circumstances trying to keep him down. Like, I walked the Earth in ignorance while Brian was recording the Paley sessions, despite not actually listening to them until 20 years later. We both went from thinking those doo-wop beach ditties were the pinnacle to growing up and seeking deeper messages in music along a similar time-frame, albeit 40 years removed and on opposite sides of the country. And now, the man who made new albums as recently as 13 years ago (about the time I was reading the Peter Ames Carlin biography about him) shall sing no more forever. The one person who could’ve revealed the fabled two-sided “Heroes and Villains” single cut, or described the missing vocals to “I Ran” has died with his secrets. We will never get a completed Adult/Child, a Smiley Smile tour, nor an officially sanctioned Love You Sessions boxset, complete with an hour-long take of “Shortenin’ Bread.” For us demoralized disciples of BDW, life continues on, but the “Summer’s Gone,” at least as we once knew it.

Anyway, since my last blog post I’ve been hard at work on a social reform project, the details of which I can’t disclose right now. Anyone in my day to day life will testify how single-mindedly I’ve pursued this goal, neglecting correspondences, personal obligations and other writing prompts (like Gnosticism) to rush it out. Brian’s passing though, that just immediately took precedence over all of that. Against the odds, against my better judgement, it just put me in a stupor where all I wanted to do–all I could do–was smoke weed, zone out, and revisit his body of work for the first time in ages. This is especially significant because after my years-long obsession with SMiLE finally burned out, plus some bad experiences with the online community, I had actually been put off from this music for awhile.

Now, it feels like I’ve rediscovered why I loved it so much in the first place, away from the drama and self-imposed pressure–kinda like Brian’s own experience, in fact. I even broke out the old Greatest Hits: 20 Good Vibrations compilations, volumes 1 and 2, which for me are where it all started as a 9 year old–before I bought my own copy of Pet Sounds on CD at age 16 (and then a 180 gram vinyl of it and several of their other albums about 5 years later in college), before I bought the SMiLE Sessions boxset and poured over those recordings with the reverence of a monk to the Bible. I still recall that fateful night I saw the Sounds of Summer comp advertised on TV and begged my mom for a copy–even at that young age, with just a minute long sampler to go by, I was mesmerized by those harmonies. No other form of media will ever have that kind of effect on my life ever again, for better or worse.

Dumb Angel, Sandalphon

While doing all this, I came up with a rough outline for a new SMiLE mix because, like the man himself, I seem totally incapable of listening to this music without coming up with a “better” way to do it. I may not get around to this for a long time (or it may be before the end of the summer, probably not but you never know) so I’ll just post my outline for safekeeping and to possibly inspire someone to do this for me so I don’t have to. (One can dream 😛 )

I’ll describe my general plan for each track, then explain these decisions as part of my overall conception for this new mix.

1. Do You Dig Worms? (Using “You’re Welcome” as an intro–I’ve never seen that pairing done before, surprisingly, and if it’s not too discordant, bits of the “Taxi Cabber” skit either buried low in the mix during YW, or perhaps the tag.)
   
2. Heroes and Villains (Flutter Horn as a quick intro, main verse, Cantina segment with “Swedish Frog” overdubs, Children were raised–three score and five verses, lalala stand a fore verse, doo doo doo doo, doobay doo-wah tape explosion verse, MAYBE IIGS segment or else right into the Western Bridge instrumental interlude, slow my children were raised verse ending with “by the Heroes and…” smash-cut right into Barnyard)
   
3. Old Master Painter (First segment use take with the maracas and possibly vocals, use part of the “He Gives Speeches” vocals over the fade)
   
4. Cabinessence (use “reconnected telephones” lyrics in first chorus if it isn’t discordant)
   
5. Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow (instead of a 4-part elements suite, just focus on what we have–the fire piece, with or without the intro depending on how long this mix gets, going into “I Wanna Be Around” with snippets from the “Smog” monolog spliced over top and continuing them over “Workshop”)
   
6. Vega-Tables (the single mix from 2011 plus the “Cornucopeia” lyrics but I’ll try to work them in better and continuing to use the “Veggie Fight” but maybe shorten it so it ends with the chorus)
   
7. Second Day (Water Chant with Undersea Chant buried low in the mix overtop of it, then “Dada” with either the flutes or “George Fell” talking in the pauses or both depending on what works, maybe “Breathing” and the fade from “Holidays” too if it’s not too much and not discordant)
   
8. Wind Chimes (Shortened, either the Good Vibrations boxset version or something closer to it than what was on the 2011 TSS)
   
9. Wonderful (Gentle IIGS instrumentation as an intro, and possibly a bit of “With Me Tonight” as a fade, I’d love to isolate those “Rock with me Henry” vocals and put them low in the mix of Version 1 of the song)
   
10. I Ran (Possibly with makeshift vocals, but either way ending after the first twelfth street rag part)
    
11. Child is Father of the Man (shortened a bit, take out the vocalless chorus-reprise section, otherwise mostly the same structure I always do for this song but maybe add vocals possibly from Project Smile)
    
12. Surf’s Up (reconfigure the Talking Horns segment, gonna try to work in strings for the second half and the “CIFOTM” reprise without the “their song is love” and “na na na” vocals of the fade if it can be done, then a few beats of silence before “Prayer” as an ending, like Vosse said it was.)

As you can see, I still stand by that 2-suite Americana/Cycle of Life general format. It’s been a decade now and that hasn’t changed, even despite always wanting to try a “one continuous suite where H&V segments link everything” and “zigzag between the two suites’ songs as long as it sounds good” structure in the abstract, I just have yet to feel inspired on those fronts. Listening to my own mixes, those of others and the session recordings, nothing comes to me that seems organic.

That said, I’m long passed caring what’s “historically accurate” following what the primary sources imply, doing it how Brian “most likely” would have. While it’s a noble endeavor, I think trying too hard to do exactly what’s on the tracklist (complete with an always disappointing crack at “The Elements”) is usually what leads to the worst parts of my mixes. So instead I’m just going back to my original strategy of a separate “Mrs O’Leary’s Cow”/”Dada” and leaving “Good Vibrations” off even though it absolutely would’ve been on there in ’67. In this case, that ended up inadvertently recreating something of a “3-suite” structure where plausible candidates for elements (Cow-Fire/Veggies-Earth/Water-Undersea Chants/Dada-Breathing Air) happened to come sequentially in between the unambiguously Americana and Innocence tracks.

There’s still Psychedelic Sounds stuff but again almost all at the beginning and end of each “side.” If it doesn’t ruin the respective tracks proper, I’d love to be able to hear “Taxi Cabber” and “Smog” on SMiLE. I got sick of “George Fell” killing the vibe after “Surf’s Up” but didn’t want to give it up completely and if it fits in “Dada” I may not have to.

Instead of messing with the order of the 2003/4 and 2011 “Cycle of Life” suite, as I’d done on previous mixes (which was done mostly to test other options–“why make a mix if it’s just gonna follow the official release?” was my thinking then) this time I’m just gonna leave greatness alone. Who cares if “Look” isn’t on the tracklist when it’s better than a lot of stuff that is? It’s one of my fave pieces of the sessions and I miss hearing it when I listen to the album. Each track will still come to its own independent conclusion but the flow will remain. Similarly, I think I’ve more or less settled on the perfect sequence for the Americana side for awhile now, I just came to dislike the H&V Bicycle Rider chorus as the finale of “Heroes” and miss “Barnyard.”

“Prayer” is attested to by Brian on tape as an intro but by Vosse in print as the outro. Since like 90+% of mixes opt for the former, this one will do the latter. I’ve done “You’re Welcome” as a lead-in before but to “Heroes,” not “Worms.” I think this pairing makes a TON of sense and I’m surprised I haven’t seen others do it.

I’m debating using AI for missing vocals, either snagging a version of “Worms” (and potentially “Child” and others) floating around there and giving credit or doing my own if it’s not too tedious and the results are satisfactory. If I resort to this, I will use the BWPS melody for the verse lyrics and NOT the TSS one as used by DAE LIMS AI Smile (which sound ridiculous to me, sorry man). Also I would post a “Indulgence Cut” with AI and a separate “Pure Cut” version without.

Thematically this means the first side starts with the “journey of the pioneer” (“you’re welcome to come!”/asking directions from a taxi driver) who ends up implausibly stranded in some rando’s garden of all places after witnessing the pilgrim’s destruction of the natives, the folly of the black/white morality imposed in westerns (both the heroes and villains killed Margarita), the subsequent loss of faith expressed in OMP (with the HGS lyrics perhaps foreshadowing the fact that is “new sunshine” is a baby), the exploitation of nature and coulees when building the railroads, the regular fires that happen in populated dwellings like Chicago, the joy of the homestead and structure of its lifestyle, the joke of the hippie stoner and gardener reenacting the fight over land 300 years later. Then the second side begins with life (beginning in water, then the first “breath of life” of our Darwinian ancestors or Adam) to death/carving out personal shelter (Wind Chimes represent the former and his chill house with them is the latter) to the BWPS second suite we all love, probably everybody’s favorite section of this music. Then it ends with a prayer, finding God again in a new context, worshiping God despite the bittersweet nature of His creation, “music people would pray to” and a harmonized “exhale” after the breathing inhales that began this side.

The name “Dumb Angel, Sandalphon” came from me being on a Christian apocrypha kick and otherwise out of alternate names to call this music. Really though, I think “Dumb Angel” is a better name than SMiLE and this way the acronym is “SAD” backwards, IE happy, IE smiling so it sort of ties the two together and describes the melancholy music. (It’s like how film develops from a negative, or negative theology, which describes God by what He is not). The album seeks to make you happy by tackling, contextualizing and “answering” the uncomfortable emotions in the music. I like to think that the Brian of ’66-’67, having his doubts, an idiot savant with the perspective of a child, wanting to make a sonic zen riddle, would’ve found this reasoning profound and been inspired to keep at it if only someone thought to speak to him on this level. Also, Sandalphon is the angel of heavenly song, gatherer of people’s prayers and psalms to take to God, so it fits directly with the themes of the record.