Heroes And Villains

In my late teenage years, I had a digital bootleg version of “SMiLE” that has now been lost to the graveyard of my old laptops. By that time, Brian Wilson had found it within himself to play the “SMiLE” songs live and by himself in London in 2002, but the non-record still held its status as the biggest mystery and tragedy of American pop music.

I think of that bootleg version of “SMiLE” often. Its track order was different from the officially sanctioned version of “The Smile Sessions” that Capitol Records released in 2011 with guidance from Wilson. But the variations in track orders in the “SMiLE” bootlegs were part of the mythology, part of what kept listeners invested in this enigmatic record for 45 years.

“Resurrecting SMiLE is both past and present,” Wilson wrote in his 2016 memoir. “When we didn’t finish the album, a part of me was unfinished also, you know? Can you imagine leaving your masterpiece locked up in a drawer for almost forty years?”

There is no way to engage with the songs that were meant to be released on “SMiLE” in 1967 without delving into the complex but overly simplified relationship between Brian Wilson and the band he started with his brothers and his cousin. The relationship between Brian Wilson and his own masterpiece. The relationship between Brian Wilson and you. The relationship between Brian Wilson and America.

Brian Wilson’s death broke me right open. It transported me to younger versions of myself. There was the ubiquity of the Beach Boys’ early surfin’ records during my Californian childhood. My teenage years when I learned that the Beach Boys were more than my childhood crush John Stamos’ favorite band. The days spent listening to that “SMiLE” bootleg. The day I played “Pet Sounds” at the daycare where I worked when I was 18, causing one parent to make some quip that it must have been downer day in the 18-month room.

But mostly, Wilson’s death hit me hard in that space where my affection for “the tortured artist” lives. My love for the broken but brilliant is an essential part of who I am, and I presume I am far from alone in this. None of us — my friends, artistic legends — seemed ready to let Wilson go, even though he was 82 years old and the only remaining member of the famous Wilson clan.

My home and life are littered with shrines to people whose profundity was inextricable from their pain. A giant Elizabeth Wurtzel poster that I bought from her estate auction lives in my living room. I love my Daniel Johnston “DON’T BE SCARED” t-shirt and the art exhibit I saw last week featuring 300 of his drawings. I wrote last week about why I’m fiercely attached to songwriter Christopher Owens. I own a copy of Kay Redfield Jamison’s biography of Robert Lowell and her book “Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament.”

Yet the younger version of me that believed fiercely in the connection between emotional suffering and artistic genius knows now that despite the records, the books, the paintings, the films, I wish my heroes had all lived easier lives.

The pain Wilson carried with him through those four decades between attempting to create “SMiLE” and playing it live sat alongside waves of paranoia, anxiety, and trauma from his tyrannical father. He had also caused much of his own suffering and had lived disconnected from the creative and driven version of himself that had made the Beach Boys one of America’s most influential bands.

“In my sixties I did what I couldn’t do in my twenties,” Wilson wrote of playing “SMiLE” live for the first time.

It’s undisputed that the entire trajectory of American rock/pop music might have been different if Wilson had seen “SMiLE” to completion back in 1966. “Pet Sounds” — a commercial flop at the time of its release — is the record that allowed the Beach Boys to be remembered as more than a jaunty early-wave pop band without substance.

Instead of singing about surfing (which they didn’t actually do) and stupid little cars, Wilson wrote of his own pain and longing. On “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times,” he offers what now looks like a warning.

I keep looking for a place to fit in
Where I can speak my mind
And I've been trying hard to find the people
That I won't leave behind

They say I got brains but they ain't doing me no good
I wish they could

“The commitment of his creative vision and application of will distinguishes him as a rare and astonishing figure in American music,” music critic Jim Fusilli wrote in his 33 ⅓ book about “SMiLE.” “More than anything, it is the myth surrounding his genius that has determined the way we hear The Beach Boys’ music.”

The release of “The Smile Sessions” in 2011 could have — and should have — reconfigured the established narrative about Wilson’s attempt to complete his masterpiece in the way that the “Get Back” documentary altered the perception of the Beatles’ days.

The first part of the compilation is a straightforward version of “SMiLE,” but the rest of it features outtakes and demos and random bits of studio banter — including a track where Wilson pretends to fall into a piano and can only get out if his bandmates play the right notes.

Really, maybe the track “Psycodelic Sounds: Brian Falls Into A Piano” sums up the relationship between Wilson and his bandmates — and Wilson and his work — more simply and accurately than reporting from the 1960s or recollections from the band members while they were still alive.

“Strike the B-flat! My foot is on it!” Wilson says to a bandmate who I can’t identify by voice. “Now hit the C-sharp real hard and I’ll come flying out.”

The keys are struck, and Wilson mocks the sound of landing with a thud.

“Hey, how are you? Glad to have you back,” someone says.

“Weird thing to happen,” Wilson says. “Weirdest thing to ever happen to me.”

Those days in the studio, crumbling under the pressure of his attempt to create another seminal record, were the ones that would define Wilson for the rest of his life. His instability was evident, and his perfectionism had punished his bandmates, his listeners, and (least importantly) his record label. Eternally branded a “tortured genius,” Wilson spent seemingly the rest of his life trying to make sense of the years between “Surfin’ Safari” and the fruitless “SMiLE” sessions.

“When I started, I just wanted to make music with my brothers and my friends and leave the business to my dad, who was managing us. We were a family band in every way,” he wrote. “But that year we got big, things changed. It was scary for me. We got going really fast. I was kind of a dumb little guy. I didn’t really acknowledge we were famous. [...] We were climbing, but what was up there when you went even higher? And what if you fell? That made me nervous and afraid, and I closed my eyes and tried to feel brave.”