“Finishing the album”: The album Brian Wilson called his greatest accomplishment
The art of making a great record is a small miracle for any musician to pull off. Although the album format wasn’t intended to make sweeping statements when they were first pressed to vinyl, having a group of songs that play off one another is what separates a working musician from a true artist who has something to say. However, while Brian Wilson opened people’s eyes to what the three-minute single could be, he still felt that getting one specific album finished was the biggest accomplishment of his career.
When talking about Wilson’s best work, though, he could have easily stopped after 1967 and still have been considered one of the best songwriters in rock. While he had already started working on surf songs for the masses, hearing tracks like ‘Good Vibrations’ on the radio opened up the playing field for people who wanted to hear something a bit different as the Summer of Love was taking off.
And even though he was confined to the studio and couldn’t be bothered to tour with the band in the mid-1960s, Pet Sounds was the masterwork slowly festering in the background. Despite him getting massive pushback from his father and Mike Love, who claimed that certain songs shouldn’t be as drug-influenced as they became, the album stands up as one of the true works of genius of the 1960s because of what Brian squeezed out of the band and The Wrecking Crew.
When someone makes that kind of sweeping statement, though, all anyone asks for is another one. And since Pet Sounds didn’t sell nearly as well as the time that was put into it, they needed something even more extravagant now that ‘Good Vibrations’ was climbing the charts and competing with the likes of The Beatles and Bob Dylan.
While both of those artists were able to release one classic after another, it’s a tall order to ask anyone to make musical perfection twice, and Brian wasn’t equipped for it. As much as his brothers Dennis and Carl were by his side, SMiLE remained in the vaults for years for not being the record that Brian heard in his head, only getting dusted off in the 2000s when he had a better handle on the material.
Although Brian would have wanted it out as the follow-up to Pet Sounds, he felt proud to have it out in the world, saying, “I used to go for long periods without being able to do anything, but now I play every day. And finishing the album SMiLE was my biggest accomplishment ever.” If it sounded half as good as the one that we got in 2004, it still would have melted minds in the 1960s.
Despite many of the songs on the record eventually getting released on subsequent Beach Boys albums, hearing them orchestrated like this is the proper successor to Brian’s masterpiece that we were all waiting for. And no matter how much people talk about Carl’s golden voice on ‘God Only Knows’, Brian puts in enough emotion to match his brother on this version of ‘Surf’s Up’, which sounds like the happiest cry of pain ever committed to tape.
But that’s the whole point behind some of Brian’s best work. There was a lot of hardship and plenty of darkness hanging in the background of his life, but all of that faded away when he sat down at the piano and gave the rest of us something to smile about.
