Episode Ep 763 May 19, 2025 51 min 45s

The great lost Beach Boys SMiLE album – David Leaf unravels rock’s Holy Grail

From Word In Your Ear Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold

The Beach Boys’ SMiLE was abandoned by Brian Wilson in 1967 and eventually performed at an emotional gathering of the faithful in London 37 years later. For writer and lecturer David Leaf it became an obsession. He made a documentary about it in 2004 and has just published ‘SMiLE: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Brian Wilson’ drawn from detailed conversations with the people involved. He talks to us here about his discoveries, which include …

... the Rolling Stone story that kick-started his obsession.

… “a bicycle ride from Plymouth Rock to Hawaii” and other early plans for the album.

… how Leonard Bernstein, the Beatles and Derek Taylor racked up the pressure in the studio.

… why the other Beach Boys – and Capitol and Murry Wilson - felt the new music was a threat to their livelihood.

… how Brian composed the “teenage symphony for God” that became an albatross around his neck.

... “Ray Davies needed a deadline”: the perils of endless recording time.

… the magnetism of Van Dyke Parks, a man who “talks in paragraphs”.

... the imagined impact on the world and the band’s career if SMiLE had come out in 1967.

… the birth of “art rock” versus the strictures of the music business.

… the value of the SMiLE myth in the eventual rebirth of the Beach Boys.

… the reaction to its long-awaited performance at the Festival Hall in 2004.

... why Brian thought shelving the album would save the group yet “they went from a No 1 single to an act nobody cared about in under a year”.