{"id":393,"date":"2025-05-11T21:27:54","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T01:27:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johntilden.net\/?p=393"},"modified":"2025-05-11T22:38:05","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T02:38:05","slug":"my-personal-smile-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johntilden.net\/?p=393","title":{"rendered":"My Personal SMiLE Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

The music of Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys has been a major part of my life. They say don\u2019t meet your heroes, but I was lucky enough to spend time with Brian during his That Lucky Old Sun<\/em> tour.\u00a0 That is another story found here<\/a>.\u00a0 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<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember the first time I heard The Beach Boys.\u00a0 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\"Most\u00a0may have been one of my older brothers playing Endless Summer<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 One of the first albums I bought on my own was 20 Golden Greats<\/em>, which as a UK release, for some reason was available in the U.S.\u00a0 The revelation track for me was \u201cYou\u2019re So Good to Me\u201d. I think our house copy of Endless Summer<\/em> was missing Disc 2 (where it appears in that collection) because the song was new and fresh to me.<\/p>\n

\"MyThe Beach Boys were the second live show I saw, starting at Jones Beach, NY in 1985.\u00a0 I think I saw them at Jones Beach at least four times.\u00a0 As I reached high school and then college, I would look for albums in used record stores. I remember my library had Love You<\/em>. It was a revelation when the compact disc \u201ctwofer\u201d releases happened starting in 1991!<\/p>\n

In those pre-Internet days, you had to go by the few books that were available to find out information about the band.\u00a0 I found a book in a bargain\"The bin called simply The Beach Boys <\/em>which was a reissue of a very detailed biography from a guy named David Leaf.\u00a0 It talked about a period in the band where Brian worked on an album he was going to call SMiLE<\/em> that got as far as having album covers and promo material made up\u2014but it was never released.<\/p>\n

I think Goldmine<\/em> magazine had a collector\u2019s issue for the Beach Boys and \"Lookthere was this strangely named book advertised called Look! Listen! Vibrate! SMiLE!<\/em> by Dominic Priore.\u00a0 I sent away for it and got my copy in February 1990 (I kept the mailer\u2014sent to my college PO Box)! Loads of information and opinions on how to make up your own mix of SMiLE<\/em>.\u00a0 Away at college I found my first bootleg cassette at a record show held at the Oakdale Mall, Johnson City, NY.\u00a0 The \u201cfeels\u201d contained on the cassette were exciting and strange.<\/p>\n

Back in those days, the sound quality would degrade as tapes were copied from\u00a0\"Bootlegone person to another and mine was decidedly not a fresh copy.\u00a0 Sometime later I found a two-cassette version of the sessions that was better quality.<\/p>\n

I think it was also around this time I found a VHS copy of Malcom Leo\u2019s 1985 The Beach Boys: An American Band<\/em> which I think is still the best overall documentary about the band.\u00a0 It contains bits of SMiLE-era music and film with tantalizing snippets to pore over.<\/p>\n

Fast-forward a little bit to the 1993 box set celebrating Thirty Years of Good Vibrations<\/em>. 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).<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t see Brian Wilson perform live until June 18, 1999 at the Beacon \"BrianTheater during a tour for his second solo album. I didn\u2019t believe that he would (or could<\/em>) continue to record and tour, so I sandwiched in seeing this concert in-between my best friend\u2019s wedding weekend.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t disappointed in that show either as the Brian Wilson Band in all of its iterations has been his best live support.\u00a0 Brian kept surprising with more tours and albums, with me continuing to see shows when I could.\u00a0 \u00a0With 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<\/em> live with a symphony? You’re lying.)<\/p>\n

Now fans had internet \u201cmessage boards\u201d and email lists, and the word was that Brian was finally open to finish SMiLE.\u00a0 We know how it happened–presented live in February 2004. While I couldn\u2019t make it to England, I got the studio recording of Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE<\/em> on September 28, 2004, went into my bedroom with headphones on and the lights off to listen.<\/p>\n

I cried finally hearing it as a completed entity the way Brian wanted it.<\/p>\n

The SMiLE tour was coming to D.C.!\u00a0 I couldn’t miss this.\u00a0 My brief recollection of that show is here<\/a>.\u00a0 Come back to it and read it last, please. It\u2019s short, but I want you to finish this post with me first.<\/p>\n

(Spoiler, I cried hearing it live, too.)<\/p>\n

Unsure about what the fuss is about? Here’s a link to a 2004 performance of BWPS<\/a> though not the original presentation.\u00a0 I’ll wait, because you’ll probably get sucked into watching the whole thing.<\/p>\n

In 2011 we were blessed with The SMiLE Sessions<\/em>, a five-CD set finally giving the world a chance to hear the original 1966 recording sessions for themselves.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t buy one of the super-deluxe versions that lit up, but I did buy the full box set.<\/p>\n

In September 2023, David Leaf (remember him?) announced that he was going to be writing a definitive history of Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE<\/em> to\"Smile 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.<\/p>\n

I sent off the linked recollection above in early September and hoped that it had something in it worth sharing in David\u2019s book.<\/p>\n

Fast-forward to April 2025 when the book was finally released in the U.S. and I received my copy.\u00a0 It\u2019s a weighty tome in hardcover. I picked it up, realized there was no index, didn\u2019t immediately see where any fan contributions were\u2014and put it down again for a few weeks as I was in the middle of reading some other things.<\/p>\n

When I picked it up again, this time I started reading it straight through.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Page 236 starts \u201cThe \u2018Brianistas\u2019 . . . Part Two\u201d covering fan recollections from the tour.\u00a0 I\u2019m struck how many names in fandom I now recognize after having had mailing list and internet interactions with many of them.\u00a0 Jeez, If they are quoting them, there\u2019s little chance my musing made the cut\u2026<\/em>.\u00a0 Until I hit page 240 in the hardcover and saw:<\/p>\n

\"book<\/p>\n

…. I cried again.\u00a0 Thank you, David. And thank you, Brian Wilson, from a now semi-official ‘brianista’ who wouldn’t have it any other way.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The music of Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys has been a major part of my life. They say don\u2019t meet your heroes, but I was lucky enough to spend time with Brian during his That Lucky Old Sun tour.\u00a0 That is another story found here.\u00a0 I was inspired to write this post by telling … Continue reading “My Personal SMiLE Journey”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings","tag-the-beach-boys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johntilden.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johntilden.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johntilden.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johntilden.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johntilden.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=393"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/johntilden.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":429,"href":"https:\/\/johntilden.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions\/429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johntilden.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johntilden.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johntilden.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}