DP: Today, the answer is no. In the past, the answer was yes. Around 1972, Carl Wilson and Steven Desper, the engineer with the Beach Boys between 1966 and 1972, had made a massive gathering of tapes of “Smile,” and that’s when a lot of
stuff was really first exhumed for possible release. They got tapes for “Love To Say Da Da” and they expanded it into “Cool Cool Water,” and they got various different pieces, and were using them between 1968 and 1971, but in 1972, Carl
Wilson and Desper were like, “Let’s get this stuff together.” They got going on it, and Brian put a stop to it...That’s when the relationship between Warner Brothers and the Beach Boys started to sour. Meanwhile, Brian was drifting
further and further away from the group emotionally. That was, yeah, he put a stop to it, at the time. He didn’t want them to put out “Surf’s Up,” and finally, he agreed to do it in 1971, and he helped finish it. So, it’s never been an easy subject for Brian Wilson, and it continues to be a thing that is not the easiest for him...[But] between Capital wanting to put it out, and the Beach Boys kind of being a hindrance, because they want to have their say, and Mike Love’s say is somewhat creatively unrewarding, as Orson Welles might say. Plus, Capital has never really had anyone in their reissue department that has seen this thing to fruition.
Gadfly: So, it’s the other Beach Boys that are standing in the way, at this point?
DP: They’re not making it easier, but at the end of the day, as long as it meant money in their pockets, they don’t really care whether it comes out or not. Nobody’s stopping “Smile” from coming, but again, it’s been to a lot people a very difficult project because there’s a multitude of tape. And the biggest problem is that people keep on sorting through all this tape over and over and over, and then a new guy gets it, and he starts sorting it over and over, and then another guy gets on it, and he has his own theories. So there’s too much jerking off, as far as I’m concerned.
Gadfly: But they did get close to releasing it, around the time of Brian’s first solo album in 1988, correct?
DP: They’ve come close to releasing it three times now, you know. Like, in ‘95 or ‘96, there was a cover story in Billboard that it was about to come out. It was unfortunate, because Timothy White jumped the gun on that story. We were actually talking about it then, and I was talking about it with Capital, and one thing led to another, and it got around to him, and he made it into a story. There was no story, there were still a lot of kinks to work, and by breaking the story, he helped to kill it.
Gadfly: In your opinion, knowing what you know, and seeing what you’ve seen, will “Smile” ever be officially released?
DP: You know,what the talk is, is this: there should be somewhat of a collection of tapes for fanatics, you know. Like with the “Pet Sounds” boxed set, there’s a lot of fascinating tapes, and with “Smile,” it’s even more fascinating, because there was a lot of little pieces of music that were done that were never really going to be included on what would have been the final album...So, that would be a very interesting project with a myriad of interesting sounds. But, I do think they are also considering that there is enough music here [that is] reasonably full of vocals, full of words, finished tracks, to put a single CD out.
Gadfly: Let’s talk about “Smiley Smile.” Several tracks were already in the can for “Smile” when it was scrapped. Why did the Beach Boys go and rerecord several of these songs for “Smiley Smile?” Many people feel the new versions pale in comparison.
DP: Carl Wilson’s great comment, “A bunt instead of a grand slam.” Well, you know, Brian Wilson, like Bob Dylan and the Beatles themselves--when you think about the Byrds, how they did “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” after coming out of
psychedelia, this whole, large, Gone With The Wind-style production in rock that started happening with “Pet Sounds” and eventually with “Sgt. Pepper”--that whole thing was strongly felt by all the leading rock artists that--even the
Stones realized, you know, “We’re not going to be doing ‘Satanic Majesties’ anymore.’” Brian, and maybe Dylan, was one of the first people to really realize, “Ok, we’re losing some of the intrinsic soul of rock and roll, because we’ve gone to fairy land, we’ve gone to pointy hat land.” It was really, really great music, but you were starting to lose the Little Richard in it, you were losing the Jerry Lee Lewis, you were losing the straight away soul, because you were going so far into “Fantasia,” that it’s time to go back to doo-wop. I think that’s what the Beach Boys were doing...Going minimalist was the next step, really, and Brian, doing that in the summer of ‘67, was really just about a year ahead of his time. I don’t think it’s a bad album, in retrospect.

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Gadfly: Could you talk a little bit about Brian’s state of mind around the “Smile” period? There’s a lot of conflicting stories about whether he was on the verge of a breakdown, or whether he was ravaged by hallucinogens, whether he was a paranoid schizophrenic, or whether that has all been blown entirely out of proportion. What was his state of mind?
DP: Well, let’s put it this way: Brian had very good reason to be paranoid. Do you realize that the master tape for “Good Vibrations” was stolen for three days, missing for three days...and Brian didn’t know where it was? It ended up being the greatest hit the group ever had, and it was stolen! So, anyone complaining that Brian Wilson was paranoid at that time isn’t really looking at the big picture. He was on top of the music business, and shit was happening.
Gadfly: Was there any resentment on the part of the other Beach Boys about Brian’s creative dominance, or dominance in general, by the time they got to “Smile?”
DP: There was beginning to be some resentment, even within some of the more creative members of the band. Carl Wilson, for one, was interviewed, where it said “Beach Boys: Puppets,” where it had a little drawing of them as Brian’s puppets. And people were starting to say, “Aren’t you guys just his puppets?” and Carl was adamant, saying, “No, we do things creatively!” Dennis Wilson’s attitude was that he didn’t worry about people saying that sort of stuff. But you know that if Carl Wilson was showing a little bit of that attitude, certainly Mike Love was going to be questioning things a bit more, and
complaining about not having more vocal parts.
Gadfly: Getting back to the music itself, what is the overall theme of “Smile,” and how does the Elemental Suite fit into this theme?
DP: I did an interview with Van Dyke Parks for the L.A. Weekly a few years back, and we talked about it, and he said there was two things: one, the Vietnam War was beginning to become the big focus, you know, of students, having become
involved in a war, escalation was happening, and this was completely nonsense, and people knew it...The other thing was that the Beatles, and the whole British Invasion...was just so overwhelming during the Mod, Swinging London days of
1965. It was really like the pop art moment, and although a lot of the pop art stuff was coming from New York and L.A., Swinging London was all the commercial pop. The public perception was that it was all coming from England, and it just
wasn’t true. Brian had his own feelings, and he felt “Wait a second, we’ve got our own culture out here, too.” But, you know, in “Smile,” they were talking about the railroads, the Wild West, the westward expansion. Some of that is covered in “Do You Dig Worms,” where they go all the way from Plymouth Rock to Hawaii, musically. You asked about the Elements suite. They were inspired by this anti-war movement, but they also wanted to show the inherent--Brian and Van
Dyke wanted to throw something back to the British Invasion that was an inherently American, Gothic trip--that’s the reason why they went after the whole thing with “Heroes and Villains,” “Cabinessence,” the railroads and all that. But then, at the same time, the Elemental Suite was what was going on at the west coast, like “Vegetables,” for instance, with the whole health food thing, and environmental concerns, you know? It’s a celebration of the environment, in that respect. Here’s American history, westward expansion, and here we are in the west, giving you the environmental themes, good vibrations, which is kind of a part of the elements, you know?
Gadfly: So, if “Smile” came out when it was originally intended to, in the first half of 1967, how would the story of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys have been different?
DP: Brian didn’t really finish the next single, “Heroes and Villains,” until February of ‘67. Capital had begun the advertising campaign for “Smile” around the Christmas season of ‘66. When he finished that single, he took the ball and he held onto it. He still had some bits he had to finish for the album, but the real thing that killed “Smile” was not Mike Love. Love didn’t help, but the thing that really killed it was that the Beach Boys wanted to start their own record label...Brian continued to make the music, while David Anderlee was trying to get the business off the ground, and then the lawsuits started. I think that if “Smile” had arrived at a timely fashion, Brian Wilson would have just been another of those true heroes of the counter-culture, which he wasn’t. He was never really a hero of the counterculture...he was never really accepted by those people. He was beginning [to be accepted], but that was cut off. If Brian had not worried about the lawsuits, he could have had “Smile” out by May. Had this happened, it would’ve been a widely heralded album, for sure. So, in terms of the Beach Boys’ acceptance by the new counterculture, they just became square pegs, also rans. They wouldn’t have become also-rans had “Smile” come out.