The music of Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys has been a major part of my life. They say don’t meet your heroes, but I was lucky enough to spend time with Brian during his That Lucky Old Sun tour. That is another story found here. I was inspired to write this post by telling an old friend about my recent experience with a wonderful oral history of Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE.
I don’t remember the first time I heard The Beach Boys. It may have been sitting at the kitchen table listening to WGSM-AM sometime in the mid-to-late 1970s in Long Island, NY. It
may have been one of my older brothers playing Endless Summer.
As my brothers left home, but some of their vinyl stayed behind, I started to explore Beach Boys music on my own, spurred on by their own fandom. One of the first albums I bought on my own was 20 Golden Greats, which as a UK release, for some reason was available in the U.S. The revelation track for me was “You’re So Good to Me”. I think our house copy of Endless Summer was missing Disc 2 (where it appears in that collection) because the song was new and fresh to me.
The Beach Boys were the second live show I saw, starting at Jones Beach, NY in 1985. I think I saw them at Jones Beach at least four times. As I reached high school and then college, I would look for albums in used record stores. I remember my library had Love You. It was a revelation when the compact disc “twofer” releases happened starting in 1991!
In those pre-Internet days, you had to go by the few books that were available to find out information about the band. I found a book in a bargain
bin called simply The Beach Boys which was a reissue of a very detailed biography from a guy named David Leaf. It talked about a period in the band where Brian worked on an album he was going to call SMiLE that got as far as having album covers and promo material made up—but it was never released.
I think Goldmine magazine had a collector’s issue for the Beach Boys and 
there was this strangely named book advertised called Look! Listen! Vibrate! SMiLE! by Dominic Priore. I sent away for it and got my copy in February 1990 (I kept the mailer—sent to my college PO Box)! Loads of information and opinions on how to make up your own mix of SMiLE. Away at college I found my first bootleg cassette at a record show held at the Oakdale Mall, Johnson City, NY. The “feels” contained on the cassette were exciting and strange.
Back in those days, the sound quality would degrade as tapes were copied from 
one person to another and mine was decidedly not a fresh copy. Sometime later I found a two-cassette version of the sessions that was better quality.
I think it was also around this time I found a VHS copy of Malcom Leo’s 1985 The Beach Boys: An American Band which I think is still the best overall documentary about the band. It contains bits of SMiLE-era music and film with tantalizing snippets to pore over.
Fast-forward a little bit to the 1993 box set celebrating Thirty Years of Good Vibrations. Disc 2 contained thirty minutes of honest-to-goodness SMiLE tracks in all of their digital clarity (besides many other goodies for the serious fan).
I didn’t see Brian Wilson perform live until June 18, 1999 at the Beacon 
Theater during a tour for his second solo album. I didn’t believe that he would (or could) continue to record and tour, so I sandwiched in seeing this concert in-between my best friend’s wedding weekend. My wife was patient enough to let me stake out the side door and I snapped a shot of the closest I had seen him in my life. I wasn’t disappointed in that show either as the Brian Wilson Band in all of its iterations has been his best live support. Brian kept surprising with more tours and albums, with me continuing to see shows when I could. With an amazing band backing him instrumentally, vocally, and emotionally, Brian became more comfortable in playing some of the “deep cuts” obsessed fans like me wanted to hear. (Who could have anticipated Pet Sounds live with a symphony? You’re lying.)
Now fans had internet “message boards” and email lists, and the word was that Brian was finally open to finish SMiLE. We know how it happened–presented live in February 2004. While I couldn’t make it to England, I got the studio recording of Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE on September 28, 2004, went into my bedroom with headphones on and the lights off to listen.
I cried finally hearing it as a completed entity the way Brian wanted it.
The SMiLE tour was coming to D.C.! I couldn’t miss this. My brief recollection of that show is here. Come back to it and read it last, please. It’s short, but I want you to finish this post with me first.
(Spoiler, I cried hearing it live, too.)
Unsure about what the fuss is about? Here’s a link to a 2004 performance of BWPS though not the original presentation. I’ll wait, because you’ll probably get sucked into watching the whole thing.
In 2011 we were blessed with The SMiLE Sessions, a five-CD set finally giving the world a chance to hear the original 1966 recording sessions for themselves. I didn’t buy one of the super-deluxe versions that lit up, but I did buy the full box set.
In September 2023, David Leaf (remember him?) announced that he was going to be writing a definitive history of Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE to
commemorate the 20th anniversary of its initial performance, and he was going to be publishing reminiscences from fans who had attended both the original performances in England and the tour.
I sent off the linked recollection above in early September and hoped that it had something in it worth sharing in David’s book.
Fast-forward to April 2025 when the book was finally released in the U.S. and I received my copy. It’s a weighty tome in hardcover. I picked it up, realized there was no index, didn’t immediately see where any fan contributions were—and put it down again for a few weeks as I was in the middle of reading some other things.
When I picked it up again, this time I started reading it straight through. David did a wonderful job using the material from his 2004 documentary and giving previously-unreleased interview sections the room to be explored, along with a lovely history of SMiLE tracks and songs from 1966 onward.
Page 236 starts “The ‘Brianistas’ . . . Part Two” covering fan recollections from the tour. I’m struck how many names in fandom I now recognize after having had mailing list and internet interactions with many of them. Jeez, If they are quoting them, there’s little chance my musing made the cut…. Until I hit page 240 in the hardcover and saw:
…. I cried again. Thank you, David. And thank you, Brian Wilson, from a now semi-official ‘brianista’ who wouldn’t have it any other way.