If SMiLE had been completed in 1967, who thinks it would have blown Sgt. Pepper out of the water?

Meaning albums of the time usually had a clunker or two or three. An album made with all good songs Rubber Soul is one of those albums.

 

After nearly 50 years of Pepper being extolled by the world, the cool thing now is to say that it's garbage.

 

Okay...so "Smile" is better than "Pepper", because of what you imagine "Smile" to be, rather that what it is?

 

Hear ya. Some call Pet Sounds garbage as well as Pepper. I love Pepper and Sounds always will. Great albums. It's fun though hearing everyone's opinions good or bad.

 

I love the SMiLE project and still voted no.

 

This is true but there are plenty of albums w/o filler before Rubber Soul. Beach Boys made some of them, so did Dylan, Sinatra & even the Beatles them selves.

What made Sgt Pepper really special as an album is that for the first time, a pop/rock act was putting all the focus on an album. As a statement, as a pure artistic expression, it is the focal point of the group. The marketing for it, the cover art & all the goodies inside, the whole band not touring anymore, the loose "concept", etc. Essentially making albums the for them, with many different artists, from Pink Floyd & Radiohead, and Marvin Gaye to Michael Jackson.
It's the most essential aspect of Pepper when it's referred to as influential imo.

Brian on SMiLE was clearing going the same route, even more so than the Beatles & himself on Pet Sounds, as SMiLE really worked as a whole thing, an experience, that's the way it was designed. Pepper & Pet Sounds could, and do, work either way

 

I agree Heroes, as it turned out, was not the right single. Brian should have kept with his second choice, Vegetables. It could have been a novelty hit like "Yellow Submarine" or "Mellow Yellow," particularly in the form it was on the Smile Sessions box. And it lets the public in on the humor theme of Smile which was the way to go (more "accessible") rather than the more oblique Parksian tracks. Vegetables/Wonderful would have made a great single in April 1967!

 

It's a great "what-if" exercise to wonder what impact Smile might have had if it had been finished and released during the first half of 1967. It would have had an impact, the earlier the release the more the impact, I believe. Even so, blow SPLHCB out of the water? I'm thinking not.

I've been a Beach Boys fan for decades, and still I feel sad for Brian Wilson and the whole Pet Sounds / Smile episode. If he'd gotten support and encouragement, and if someone had stepped in to help moderate or stop his prodigious drug intake, maybe his fragile mental state wouldn't have fallen apart and the brilliant trajectory he was on wouldn't have derailed like it did.

Sad to ponder, even now.

 

My issue is I don't understand Smile. I'm no big fan of Sgt. Pepper's but I can get the ideas behind it more. I feel like Brian's reach exceeded his grasp here. I mean, take this from the Wiki article on Smile:

"The concept of Smile did not lend itself to any formal narrative development, only to themes and experiences; though Smile references some specifically, it is only in passing. Most of the album's thematic direction was given to Parks with hardly any instruction from Wilson. Together, the two desired a back-to-basics approach to songwriting, as Wilson summarized, "We wanted to capture something as basic as the mood of water and fire."

It is generally acknowledged that Wilson and Parks intended Smile to be explicitly American in style and subject, a conscious reaction to the overwhelming British dominance of popular music at the time. It was conceived as a musical journey across America from east to west, beginning at Plymouth Rock and ending in Hawaii, traversing some of the great themes of modern American history and culture including the impact of white settlement on native Americans, the influence of the Spanish, the Wild West and the opening up of the country by railroad and highway.

Smile was partly intended to combat the British Invasion sparked by the Beatles in 1964

In reference to how George Gershwin "Americanized" jazz and classical music, Wilson in his own words intended to "'Americanize' early America and mid-America". Parks said that the duo "kind of wanted to investigate … American images. … Everyone was hung up and obsessed with everything totally British. So we decided to take a gauche route that we took, which was to explore American slang, and that's what we got." He clarified this notion further by saying, "So this is what this stuff was: American music. We would use the thematic America. We would be the Americans. Why do that? Everybody else was getting their snout in the British trough. Everybody wanted to sing 'bettah'', affecting these transatlantic accents and trying to sound like the Beatles. I was with a man who couldn't do that. He just didn't have that option. He was the last man standing. And the only way we were going to get through that crisis was by embracing what they call 'grow where you're planted'." Historian Darren Reid interpreted that the focus on older American themes was a self-conscious, deeper reflection on the hedonistic, modern Americana of the Beach Boys' earlier songs.
Aside from focusing on American cultural heritage, Smile's themes include scattered references to childhood, physical fitness, poetry, and God.

Many traits in Smile lyrics are reminiscent of patrician period imagery and the Romantic poetry movement that began in the mid-to-late 18th century, with the biggest focus being on the Songs of Innocence and of Experience collection of poems written by English poet William Blake. Thematic links to Songs of Innocence and of Experience by concept of childhood and spirituality carry throughout other songs and tracks. However, the piece "My Heart Leaps Up" by William Wordsworth originated the idiom "Child Is Father of the Man" later recycled by Wilson and Parks.[citation needed] Other general Smile themes have been recited by Smile visual artist Frank Holmes to have included "travel, nature, history, communications, love stories, virtue, betrayal, bucolic splendor, astrology, [and] mystery"

I just feel like all of this is very much...all over the place? I feel like Brian's ideas were better suited to say, a 4-6 hour long symphony than a 50 minute or so album. I just feel there's no focus to the project, no cohesiveness to the 1967 versions of the album, and that while his overall theme is "Americana", the limited numbers and limited space don't really portray this well. I guess I really just don't get it.

I also think that the project has a very big air of spite about it. If TSMR is a tongue-in-cheek parody of Sgt. Pepper in some areas, SMiLE as conceived seems like almost a passive-aggressive condemnation or refutation of all things British and British Invasion. It's just too abstract and too alien, honestly, even as an American, to wrap my head around.

 

While Brian did have issues and took too many drugs, no one knew exactly what toll they were taking on him. His trusted friends and advisers were actively helping with the intake. This was not the only reason why Smile was not completed. Just listen to Brian run the Smiley Smile & Wild Honey sessions. The man was still in command. What Brian really needed to complete Smile were digital files and a nice laptop to help with piecing it all together.

 

Sometimes all you need is one or two happy-g0-lucky singles to save an album. Look at the Blind Melon album; how many songs have lasted other than "No Rain"?

 

"The concept of Smile did not lend itself to any formal narrative development, only to themes and experiences; though Smile references some specifically, it is only in passing. Most of the album's thematic direction was given to Parks with hardly any instruction from Wilson. Together, the two desired a back-to-basics approach to songwriting, as Wilson summarized, "We wanted to capture something as basic as the mood of water and fire."

This isn't exactly the case. While the "American" and "American history" aspects clearly originated with Parks, Wilson's song ideas were rooted in the natural world (The elements, wind chimes) and his obsessions with health food (Vegetables) and humor and the innocence of childhood. The American songs (Worms, Cabinessence, even Heroes) sit uneasily with the songs that originated from Brian, and in fact Brian's growing uneasiness and discomfort with the American songs ultimately led him to put the project aside. Surf's Up, while not explicitly American, was a cultural commentary/critique song that also was more Parks than Wilson. Smiley Smile had only one of the American songs on it, the single Heroes and Villains.

Smiley Smile more accurately reflected Brian's thematic ideas to the exclusion of Parks. The best Parksian lyrics reflecting and interpreting Brian's emotional and intellectual passions of the time was IMO Wonderful. And it's interesting that on Smiley Smile, Brian was credited with 100% of the song - not that I doubt Parks wrote most of the lyrics, but that lyric seems to be a more equal collaboration than most and perhaps that's why Parks was initially left off the credits.

 

Notice the Wings At The Speed Of Sound advertisement poster in the background.
Super 1976. Parks explains this specific era.

 

no. no way. not on any planet in any universe in any lifetime.

 

The two albums would have co-existed neatly, just as Pet Sounds and Revolver did and continue to do.

 

I highly doubt SMiLE could have topped Sgt. Pepper. However, it could have continued The Beach Boys' reputation as a cutting edge band, no doubt. The songs, or the most finished of them, speaks for themselves. "Our Prayer", "Heroes And Villains", "Vega-Tables", "Wonderful", "Cabin Essence", "Good Vibrations", "Do You Like Worms?", "Child Is Father Of The Man", "Wind Chimes", "Mrs. O' Leary's Cow" and "Surf's Up", all on the same album. It couldn't have failed.

 

No, not crazy. This entire 67-page thread is based on the hypothetical... a whole series of imagined "what if's?" Maybe you haven't been paying attention.

I posted my own "version" of SMiLE back in 2015 when this thread was fresh. I've listened to it 100 times for every spin of the officially-compiled releases.

 

You may be right... the Beach Boys image may have been a bigger problem than the experimental nature of the music. The 60's and 70's could be unforgiving when it came to artistic evolution. Old rockers like Dion, The Everly Brothers, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, or rockers & folkies turned singer-songwriters like Eric Andersen, Gene Clark and Dion (again)... they were "old men," abandoned by their original audiences and having a tough time reinventing themselves.

If Buddy Holly had lived, would he have been accepted in 1967 wearing a Nehru jacket and granny glasses?

The question here should be, if SMiLE had been completed and released according to schedule, six or seven months before The Beatles Sgt. Pepper... would pop music history be written differently? I think brianvargo has it about right:

 

Well, we will never know how Smile would have sounded if Brian Wilson completed it back in 1967...

But I like to think about it as the best Album ever that was too good to be completed. This way, its perfection can never be critizised because it doesn't exist.

I also like to think that if Smile was completed in 1967 Brian Wilson never got depressed and by now we would have achieved World Peace.

So it is a yes from me

 

If you were alive and older than about eight in 1967, you would know why these two could never be compared.

 

Smile is a different type of album then Sgt Peppers. Sgt Peppers is a collection of great songs that can stand alone but together make a great album. Smile is a album that you have to listen to the whole thing for it to make sense. Unfortunately Smile was never finished. If it had been finished I still think it wouldn’t have rivaled Sgt Peppers

 

I voted no.....

nothing could blow Pepper out of the water and there was many timeless albums released that year....

 

Just a word about the repeated references here to the fact that the Beach Boys were voted best group over the Beatles by British NME readers in late 1966. I yield to no one in my admiration for the Beach Boys and their music, but the vote must be viewed in its historical context. As of the time of the vote, the Beatles had all but disappeared since their touring in the summer. They were last heard from in August, with Revolver, and their dormancy led to rumors that they were finished, an impression ostensibly confirmed by Parlophone's release of a greatest hits album. In contrast, the Beach Boys were on top of their UK popularity. They had just released Good Vibrations, justifiably a worldwide sensation, and were visiting Britain to promote the single. Of course, things were about to change substantially, with the Beatles entering the studio to record and release Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane, and then Sgt. Pepper's several months later, all to universal acclaim. In contrast, the Beach Boys produced nothing new, reportedly paralyzed by group dynamics and illicit substances, forcing EMI to release Then He Kissed Me as a single. I summit that the razor thin margin by which the Beach Boys won the vote should be viewed in this context.

 

All of which goes to show how fluid and volatile the terrain of pop music was back then. Things could change in a heartbeat. The Beatles weren't permanently ensconced as deities on Acropolis the way they are now on this forum. They hadn't released a new record in a whole four months! They toured the Philippines instead of England, and they didn't have a series of Christmas concerts scheduled in London!!! It wasn't so much that audiences were fickle (although they could be); it was an extremely fertile time and people were eager to hear something NEW!

 

The Sounds for me.