GRiN progress

     Even before Brian Wilson passed away, I'd wanted to do a deep dive, find every-single-shred of recorded material from the Smile sessions and try to record it over, myself.

    It wasn't until late in 2025 that the process began. 

Scenarios and Parameters


    My goal is as follows: produce a version of Smile, the follow up to Pet Sounds. That's it. 

    The scenario is "alternate history" territory, in which

    1. It met its Jan 1967 release deadline
    2. Brian was kept steady by Van Dyke Parks, who saw the project to its completion
    3. The touring band maintained faith in the project. No confrontations, no spiraling into irrelevant weirdness
    4, The band did not sue Capitol Records yet
    5. Carl was not drafted yet
    6. Maybe someone got Brian to stop relying on Desbutal for that extra boost. Maybe Brian saw the growing likelihood the LSD etc were not answers to his problems or keys to his enlightenment. Maybe he really got behind Smile because of the support that remained.
    7. There would be no breakdown in 1968.

    With this in mind, I believe an album of 12 independent songs "like Pet Sounds, but it'll rock harder," would have emerged. I believe the fingerprints of Summer Days (and Nights!), Today, and Pet Sounds would be all over Smile. 

    The lyrics would include Van's contributions, and feature bits of Brian as well.

    I wrestled with the myth and tried to get it out of my way. I believe I've succeeded in that respect, and continued to research the project and everyone involved with it. Luckily, there are a lot of artifacts in print, sound, and video. 

    I realized at a certain point, there were two stages to the Smile sessions. In the first part (say, Mid 1966 through November), there was momentum, optimism. Things were clicking, and the whole thing was gelling. Brian was proceeding apace and working toward completion. His obsessiveness was an asset.

    From November onward, things soured. You can hear it in the session recordings. Major key tonality becomes decidedly melancholy; not in the Pet Sounds way, but in a sort of dread. Obsessiveness overwhelmed every aspect of Brian's life. A major catalyst was the sessions for "Mrs O'Leary's Cow" and the aftermath, It is because of this division that I decided to do first versions of songs, rather than second versions, which predictably had less vitality, and less optimism.  "Child Is The Father of The Man" and "Wind Chimes" feature first versions, as does "Wonderful."


    Essentially, I'm taking license and getting rid of the negative forces that knocked the project off course. Like all other "what If?" stories, the chronological and contextual tailoring are done with reasonable presumption at the root. It is not my intention to pass the results of my project off as Beach Boys product or my own product. It is something that will credit Brian and Van for all the work they did. My stuff is just additions for hypothetical completion.

    Thanks to YouTube user Badman II, the doors to starting the project were flung open after hearing his Brian-sourced and AI assisted completion of "Do You Like Worms?" Its melody is based on a wee snippet of melody Brian ran through while showing a session player the suggested tempo and meter of the song.  

    I took that melody as a basis, and referred to the known Van Dyke Parks lyrics for the song in 1966. I had to revise the melody and harmony parts (even on the "bicycle rider" section), and I omitted the chanting. The tag of the song is completely new.

    Two other songs without lyrics, "Look! (I Ran)" and "Holidays," were my next songs. For the former, attention had to be given to count, and chord progression especially during the quieter parts. The stronger scalar climb (which I consider the chorus), and the call back motif from "Good Vibrations" were easier to replicate. 

    For "Holidays," I was still lining up the song order. "Holidays" had a specific placement to fulfill a specific need.

    Side A
    Heroes & Villains
    I'm In Great Shape/ link / Barnyard
    He Gives Speeches (Persuasion)
    Holidays
    Wind Chimes (version 1)
    Friday Night / Cabin-Essence

    Side B
    Do You Dig Worms?
    Vege-Tables
    Look! (I Ran)
    Child Is The Father of The Man
    Wonderful
    Surf's Up (with tag)

    Side A starts with "Heroes & Villains", with the "cantina" section, but without the chorus of the single. It's a big flourish into the idealized American Western. After that we progress to a caricature  of agrarian industry and homespun farm to market capitalism. Then, in the same manner of Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt. "He Gives Speeches" and a glance at the ugly underneath. 

    To have a dramatic break, "Holidays" is. as it sounds, a TV jingle. In this case pitching escapism in the "old Beach Boys" sound. very clean, very polished, artificially so. The lyrics reflect America's predilection for domestic travel around the turn of the 20th Century. That in turn brings the listener back to "Wind Chimes" (version 1) in the "present" of the album. "Cabin-Essence" brings alive the speediness with which Americans took charge via Manifest Destiny, of everything in their path, even after reaching the Pacific Ocean. This is also why Side B starts with "Do You Dig Worms?."

    At one point, around March 2026, I had the following:

    Heroes & Villains                      80% done
    Wonderful                                 80% done
    Do You Dig Worms?                 80% done
    Holidays                                    80% done
    Cabin-Essence                         60% done
    He Gives Speeches (Persuasion) done
    Friday Night                                   done
    I'm In Great Shape/ Barnyard        attempted
    Surf's Up                                        attempted
    Vege-Tables                                   attempted

    Then I accidentally erased the session files for "Do You Dig Worms?" "He Gives Speeches" (Persuasion), "Holidays" and "Friday Night" while trying to get rid of duplicate files. 

    My own mojo took a serious hit. It wasn't the only reason.

    Now, I've restarted all of the tracks, made various discoveries and epiphanies with "Surf's Up" and "Child Is The Father of the Man" and "Look! (I Ran)." 

    "The Elements" is not included because I believe "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow" and its aftermath made the rest of the project unwieldy. It was to be a suite of short songs, yet still "song length." I imagine the modular recording style Brian wanted to highlight could have made that a reality.

    "Good Vibrations" is not included because it was its own thing: a transitional signpost between old and new approaches to music.

    "Prayer" wasn't included because I feel it would be disrespectful to try to do it. It was very personal for Brian and the band. I don't believe it's essential to my version.


Autopsies

    I've had to not only retrace steps several times, but also visit areas that are extraneous to the average fan. It is my nature to want to understand the people involved as individuals, as well as the dynamics between people. 

    I had to learn a lot about "the real" Brian, Marilyn, Van, Mike Love, Michael Vosse, Derek Taylor, Chuck Britz, Hal Blaine, David Anderle, Tony Asher, etc as well as any attachments from the authors of articles and bios I read to the actual events. It has been a heavy slog, but a great distraction from my own grief and inner turmoil. 

    It is a classic case of being around someone who has a unique set of approaches toward socializing, humor, songwriting, production, friendship and marriage. As far as I can tell, everyone adjusted to Brian's quirks and sense of humor. Most of all, everyone saw the project as more than worthwhile, and everyone saw Brian Wilson go from gifted songwriter, singer, arranger, producer and collaborator to a shadow of himself over the space of less than a year. They saw the steps down into paranoia, indecision, and the weight of several pressures (some self-created but not real) slowly steal the mojo, the confidence, the motion of the project away from him. 

    The hard evidence is of course the session tapes themselves; the banter, the frustration, the willingness to follow Brian's direction, even when he lacked the words to express it in detail. 

    There is joy in those initial sessions, especially when a full pass through is made and everything suddenly makes sense to the session players. The later sessions feature more fatigue, exhaustion, frustration and almost ambivalence. 

    The vocal sessions show the contrast between the touring members of the band and Brian. They're having a blast. Brian is not; at least not from November 1966 onward.

    For his part, Van Dyke Parks is an enigmatic presence in the mix. He enjoyed a span working with Brian alone, no limits, no deadlines. The appearance of the touring band members exposed to him the inner drama that had always accompanied the band. He tried to maintain distance from it, but eventually it came to him; when that happened, he prioritized his self respect and left the scene. 

    Did he know the lay of the land of the project? Could he have maintained some order? I believe so. Though Brian was secretive about the actual layout of Smile, I believe the collaborative relationship between the two, both skilled and gifted musicians and composers, would have included a broad picture of that lost world, Smile.

    Did he know how sensitive Brian Wilson had always been to criticism from band mates? Unlikely. At the time,  He did say that he felt put upon to defend himself while Brian just sat there. 

    "I can get behind the way Brian does it. It's funny to watch him when he can't find something he owns. It's cute when he ignores someone else's needs, because he can always plead insanity."


    Van Dyke Parks and his wife Dorrie were living check to check. Van was in the middle of a process of becoming a part of the music industry in Hollywood. He had to provide for his livelihood; something he could do with or without Brian Wilson's involvement.

    The departure of Van Dyke Parks as collaborator left the project without a rudder or a compass. It's not that it was his responsibility to safeguard the project, but he was a major grounding force for Brian. 


Not Smile, But Something

    So this is the first entry in what will be a log of progress for the project. 
I have no intention of infringing on the original work or authors of the work. 
I have zero desire to upset any member of the Wilson family, nor the remaining members of the original band. 

    This is part offering, part homage, and part dialoguing with a vision. That vision belonged to one man, and I respect both deeply. 

    I've already received a bit of salt from certain fans of the band and the myth. They can keep the myth. I just want to see what it would sound like. 

    Although I have the luxury of digital DAWs and virtual instruments, no MIDI will be used. I'm performing and arranging everything. I'm also singing everything. I can't write or use notation, so it's all in my head. I will not duplicate the arrangements exactly, nor, probably the parts, but this will hopefully be a passable version, recapturing that original attempt to follow up Pet Sounds, that would have  legitimized (an now reaffirm) Brian Wilson as a songwriter to be respected, no matter the genre or time, in 1967.

Post Parents

         To say your parents run your life is a misattribution. From day one, no one runs your life. You have agency, but your life is ultimately dependent on a certain set of conditions you have no control over.  These include the conditions into which you were born, and whether you were born or not. 

    After about 15 years or so, an individual, raised in a fixed set of circumstances for so long, begins to take for granted the maintenance of those circumstances. The consequence of stability is for the individual in question to proclaim they "understand" the world, themselves, and what they want. This is, of course, naive. There are no teenagers immune from this conditon; and as demonstrated by many individuals I've come across along the way, it is seldom remedied. Even the introspective aren't given a pass -- for as Feynman said "You are the easiest one to fool."

    By the time I had reached 30, I had far surpassed everyone's expectations of me. High school grad, college grad, district intern, experienced high school teacher, and at that point, until recently, single, and leader of a band. It was at 30 I noticed my parents, as if anew. They noticed me noticing them, and thus began perhaps the second happiest part of my relationship to them.

    This part was different. All involved were independent adults. Whereas they had put years of hard work and struggle behind them, and embraced a new retired life thanks to some wheeling and dealing by my father's mother, I was finally able to appreciate that. What they had wasn't glamourous, but they had a home they owned outright, albeit in the middle of nowhere. In a place of arid soil, and seasonal climate, Dad would construct a garden and grow chilies and garlic and onions; he would tend numerous types of flower. Accidentally, they carried a hidden California poppy field in their move, and every spring, their lot was adorned with hundreds of them. It certainly brightened up an otherwise dull landscape dominated by sagebrush, wild juniper, cheat grass and rosemary.

    Visiting my parents was a 6.5 hr drive. As the years would pass, the drive would feel shorter. I looked forward to visiting them with presents for each: a CD of compiled rare oldies Mom requested, and a bottle of single malt scotch for Dad. Our evenings consisted of dinner, then game after game of Gin Rummy, with the new music playing in the background. Dad kept score. We'd play to 3000 points. At some point, Dad and I would share a drink of whatever I bought, followed by a sandwich, or batch of nachos he'd make for us all to snack on. Mom was never in contention during these marathons. Dad was aggressively competitive in everything, and Mom just wasn't going to play into that by beating him. It was down to a war of attrition between Dad and I.

    Mistakenly, Dad presumed I was as competitive. On more than one occasion where I just happened to win a few hands in a row, and he began to lose his temper, I made a point of reminding Dad I was just playing to enjoy the time with them -- I played whatever hand I was dealt, and whether I won or lost didn't matter to me. Dad would just look at me, then go back to one of the many tactics he used to distract: whistling, tapping on the table...singing out of tempo with whatever song was playing...None of it worked, but was an extension of the fact he'd always been a very forward and assertive person if he felt he could intimidate. He used it a lot when we were at a school function to keep me timid, or grandstand because of some achievement I'd made.

    It wasn't until I was in my mid 30s that I truly began to build a bridge with Dad. By that time I was divorced -- Dad didn't think I'd have the guts to pull it off -- I'd also had my jaws realigned again. I was on equal ground with Dad. We liked being around each other. It was almost like it was when I was very small; a period where I could rely on things to be stable at home. Dad knew I was a good kid. I was interested in everything, and asked lots of questions. Mom taught me to read at an early age. I couldn't play outside like normal kids. I was sunblind, and weak in general. Mom was always terrified I'd fall and break my neck or something.

    When I visited, Dad always had a new place he wanted to check out with me along for the ride. I went, never knowing where we'd end up. Once it was a German restaurant near Reno; once it was Twin Lakes; once it was Panum Crater, near Mono Lake. Another time we went to a ghost town, Bodie, and just milled around taking pictures. Mom wasn't able to walk far any more, plus, she liked the alone time. At least at that point, she knew Dad would return.

    Had I three more years with Dad, I knew we would've had a breakthrough. He would have finally realized how similar his conditions, socially, growing up, were mirrored by mine. Perhaps we would understand each other better. Perhaps his mask would fall and shatter at last, and Dad and I could just "be." He'd know there were two people who he didn't have to feel scrutinized by at last.

    The twelve years I spent caring for Mom, Dad was never far from the conversation, or out of either of our minds. We didn't miss his temper, his anger, or his know-it-all nature. We missed his voice, his warmth, his pork roast and dumplings, his apple pancakes, and the joy he'd show when he realized all was well as could be...a far cry from Wroclaw, Poland (then Germany), and the other places his family had to move to from 1934-45. He could have never guessed he'd end up with a family, a country home, and a wife of 53 years. It was incredible. I should be so lucky.

    Having lost Mom, I have just gone through a period where the very firmament fell from beneath my feet. I would have never guessed how intertwined my sense of identity was with Mom and Dad. Even now, I often wonder if I live for any other reason than to connect with my parents....With them both gone, I've struggled to connect with others, and failed miserably. I still have friends, and I cherish them. I knew for a long time what it was to have none; but I tried to connect with a new person, and received a weird mix of explosiveness and cruelty in return. I was unprepared for that. It was undeserved.

    All the good news, every development, merits a call to Mom and Dad, and reminds me that that option is gone now, forever. I have never felt so singular, nor so out of phase with the universe. Parents don't run your life. Considered properly, once grown, a person can see that they enhance it: learning, and care, and nurturing is a two way street.