Reverend Rock
cool music and hot coffee
Re: The SMiLE Thread
Mike Love certainly didn't help matters, but I think there are many many factors. The Beach Boys were involved with a rather nasty lawsuit against Capitol Records at the time, and Capitol for their part were putting deadlines on the project that were, at best, unrealistic by the standards of the kind of work it was. They can't really be blamed for that, when the average artist could throw together an album of disposable pop muzak in weeks, but Brian Wilson wasn't playing that game at this point. He has said in iterviews that he would have needed another year to get SMiLE ready for release using the primitive (by today's standards) recording technology of the time.
Brian's psychological problems, it appears from almost all sources, were beginning to spin out of control during this period as well. They didn't begin with SMiLE, by the way. The initial symptoms had begun showing up a couple of years earlier and were a chief reason that he'd abandoned touring with the Beach Boys.
All of the above factors have been well documented. But in spite of it all, I think he could have delivered a blockbuster album in January of '67 had he had the group's full support of the project. But this new music scared the daylights out of the guys, because Pet Sounds, while a critical triumph, had been a commercial dissapointment for them (as alg has already noted), and they were keen on getting back to the "formula" that had given them success up to that point. At the very least, they would have preferred an album full of pop smashes like "Good Vibrations", which had been an international smash single and had given them a big boost in both America and Europe. So they simply weren't willing to give their heart and soul to a project as innovative and untested as SMiLE. They were on a different planet than Brian at this point.
Of course, what's really strange is that the guys, while unwilling to give their heart to SMiLE because of commercial considerations, would throw commerciality to the wind within months to do the even less commercial Smiley Smile...but that's a whole 'nother mess altogether...
Peace,
The Rev
Mike Love certainly didn't help matters, but I think there are many many factors. The Beach Boys were involved with a rather nasty lawsuit against Capitol Records at the time, and Capitol for their part were putting deadlines on the project that were, at best, unrealistic by the standards of the kind of work it was. They can't really be blamed for that, when the average artist could throw together an album of disposable pop muzak in weeks, but Brian Wilson wasn't playing that game at this point. He has said in iterviews that he would have needed another year to get SMiLE ready for release using the primitive (by today's standards) recording technology of the time.
Brian's psychological problems, it appears from almost all sources, were beginning to spin out of control during this period as well. They didn't begin with SMiLE, by the way. The initial symptoms had begun showing up a couple of years earlier and were a chief reason that he'd abandoned touring with the Beach Boys.
All of the above factors have been well documented. But in spite of it all, I think he could have delivered a blockbuster album in January of '67 had he had the group's full support of the project. But this new music scared the daylights out of the guys, because Pet Sounds, while a critical triumph, had been a commercial dissapointment for them (as alg has already noted), and they were keen on getting back to the "formula" that had given them success up to that point. At the very least, they would have preferred an album full of pop smashes like "Good Vibrations", which had been an international smash single and had given them a big boost in both America and Europe. So they simply weren't willing to give their heart and soul to a project as innovative and untested as SMiLE. They were on a different planet than Brian at this point.
Of course, what's really strange is that the guys, while unwilling to give their heart to SMiLE because of commercial considerations, would throw commerciality to the wind within months to do the even less commercial Smiley Smile...but that's a whole 'nother mess altogether...
Peace,
The Rev
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