David Leaf has risen to a Beach Boys’ role similar to that of Mark Lewisohn with The Beatles and the late Johnny Rogan with The Byrds. He is now the groups’ foremost archivist and biographer, though in Leaf’s case his focus is primarily on Brian Wilson, their dominant figure, with whom he has worked in various capacities over the past four decades. This is his third book about the group, though his first, The Beach Boys & The California Myth, originally published in 1978, has been republished, retitled and updated many times, just like Rogan’s Byrds books and, to a lesser extent, Lewisohn’s Beatles books.
Leaf’s latest book is an oral history of the making, aborting and re-making of SMiLE, Wilson’s follow-up to Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys’ 1966 album widely acknowledged as his masterpiece, and consists of hundreds of old and new quotes from everyone involved, punctuated by the author’s informed explanations and commentary on a legendary album that never was, not until 2004 anyway, though in the meantime tracks recorded for it had appeared on other Beach Boys LPs and their exemplary 1993 5-CD box set Good Vibrations: 30 Years of The Beach Boys.
The book is, in every conceivable way, the last word on a subject as complex as it is fascinating. As the follow-up to Pet Sounds, expectations for SMiLE were off the scale but it was not to be. “Determining how, when and why SMiLE began to fall apart is much more difficult,” writes Leaf after mention of non-musical issues impacting on The Beach Boys in 1966, among them Carl Wilson’s draft notice and an impending lawsuit with Capitol Records “Actually, it’s impossible.”
Nevertheless, Leaf and several others, among them Wilson himself, do their best to explain why SMiLE never happened, drawing attention at some length to the lack of enthusiasm for Brian’s SMiLE songs from other members of the group, most notably Mike Love, who felt he was ‘fucking with the formula’, which sapped Brian’s confidence. “He hated it,” says Brian at one point. “I didn’t know how to deal with it.” Their record company, eager for more big hits in the style of ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ and ‘I Get Around’, wasn’t too keen on it either.
Another factor was what seems today, as I write this, a disturbing omen for Los Angeles. During the recording of a track provisionally titled ‘Fire’, part of an ‘Elements’ suite that would eventually emerge as the freeform, slightly disturbing ‘Mrs O’Leary’s Cow’, a building close to Gold Star Studios, where the album was being recorded, burned to the ground. This spooked Wilson who retreated into his shell, a situation exacerbated by his increasing dependence on mind-altering drugs. Furthermore, Brian felt strong competition from The Beatles and it didn’t help when Paul McCartney arrived in Los Angeles and played him ‘She’s Leaving Home’ from their upcoming Sgt Pepper album.
All of these matters take up roughly the first half of the book, with the remainder devoted firstly to Brian’s re-emergence after being sent off the rails by the SMiLE debacle, with the final third detailing how the album was finally re-recorded, and performed live, by Brian with a bunch of newly appointed, highly skilled musicians, all of whom worshipped at his feet. Such flattery is justly warranted, of course, though it does get a bit wearying as the book progresses. We all know that Brian Wilson was great at what he did, probably among the best young composers in the world during his heyday, but the number of times such acclaim is repeatedly expressed by one and all during Leaf’s book is its only flaw.
SMiLE: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Brian Wilson is published by Omnibus Press on 13 March, RRP £25 (£23 on Amazon) and contains 321 pages with an eight-page colour photo section and, in a concluding chapter, contributions from 14 other music writers in thrall to SMiLE and Wilson’s talents. The book lacks an index.
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