Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece by Dominic Priore Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece
Book Review: The Big Picture
Summary: 5 Stars
Somewhere in the story of Smile many of us went from fans and obervers to participants in its remarkable 38 year saga. Domenic is one of those people. The story of Smile is one of human tragedy, renewal, and healing.Brian was blessed to have a group of fans who not only loved his music, but cared about HIM as a human being. Several people who startd out as fans ended up as a part of bringing Smile to fruition in 2004. I think Domenic's role in bringing the album to fruition is crucial. He tells the story here accurately and with a reverence for the music that displays his command of the scope of the work and its context.The fact of the matter is NO ONE has spoken to as many principles in the story as Domenic, and Van Dyke Parks has actively supported the book and its marketing. There are interpretations Domenic draws and inferences he makes that I do not agree with, but the big picture is accurate, and I recommend this book without reservation to anyone as a well done picture of the entire Smile Saga. Book Review: Picking up the pieces
Summary: 4 Stars
Despite all of its recent successes it would seem that Brian Wilson's & Van Dyke Parks' meisterwerk will forever be plagued by controversy and doubt, as some of the reaction to this book has proven. The author is a true authority on the subject matter from both a musical and cultural perspective and, despite some confusing passages and questionable theories, this book is an integral part of understanding the mythos of SMILE. Brian Wilson was not an isolated figure in 1966 - he was part of a much bigger musical collage that Priore does an excellent job of re-assembling. Many of the primary sources (lengthy interviews with Van Dyke Parks, Danny Hutton, etc.) are as important as any previous word on the matter. There are gaps to be sure, but one walks away with the impression that SMILE is truly a work-in-progress and that this book's intention was to tell not only the story so far, but also what has been revealed so far. Book Review: A masterpiece of pop music scholarship!
Summary: 5 Stars
It's difficult to heap enough praise on Domenic Priore's book about SMiLE. This is a detailed, multi-leveled analysis of SMiLE-- every aspect of the southern California music scene is analyzed, especially every detail that relates to Brian Wilson's failed attempt to get SMiLE off the ground in 1967. Some reviewers have suggested that Priore strays from the topic too often. Not so. He is simply laying out a solid case for his reasons why SMiLE was created, then sabotaged in 1967. There are two recent excellent books that are comparable: "Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina" by David Hajdu, and "Birth Of The Cool : Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant Garde" by Lewis MacAdams. What these books have in common with Priore's is that you feel you are getting a real picture of the whole scenerio because of the way the authors fit all the historical pieces together.
If I were Beach Boy singer Mike Love, I would not be happy about the release of this book. Priore interviews people with close connections to Brian and the band and reports on evidence (such as Love's verbal attack on "Surf's Up" right in front of the cameras as they were recording Brian's solo performance of the track for a TV special about the importance of popular music) to make the case that Love was little more than a musically shallow, abusive control freak who would stop at nothing to destroy SMiLE, even if it meant destroying Brian in the process. There's even better evidence than this in the book, but I'll leave it to the truly curious to read all the gory details.
It's no small thing that Brian Wilson wrote the forward for this book. SMiLE lyricist Van Dyke Park is interviewed extensively and writes his own forward in which he states "...Priore has given an accurate and detailed account of the creation of this celebrated work."
Heaping insult on injury, Priore even tags the remaining band members with the dreaded "conservative" political label for doing campaign rallies in support of George Bush (Sr.). The very thought of a band that was once stood at the brink of the counterculture supporting the heartlessness of the U.S. right wing (bash the poor, scapegoat the minorities) is nauseating. However, considering the way the band, or at least Mike Love, helped to sabotaged SMiLE, it makes a kind of sick, sad sort of sense.
After SMiLE, The Beach Boys would go on to record some mediocre albums, and despite a few pieces reflecting the band's growing interest in inner peace and meditation, they would come nowhere close to the peak experience of SMiLE.
Like the fans described in Priore's book, I'm one of those who came to SMiLE through cassette tape excerpts circulated by fans I met on the Internet. Not having been a Beach Boys fan during their heyday, I quickly saw that SMiLE was one of the most amazing works of pop music from the psychedelic era. The book documents the turn of events that lead Brian to re-recording, from scratch, the SMiLE song cycle in 2004, with Van Dyke Parks back as lyrical collaborator. The triumph of the album, despite Brian's aged vocal cords, reveals that when we lost SMiLE in 1967, we lost not only that album but the possibility of a whole series of works of equal brilliance, since the band retreated to standard rock fare and eventually to Beach Boys early 60s nostalgia.
Mike Love can meditate from now until the cows come home, but he'll never have one ounce of the artistic brilliance that Brian exhibited in the creation of the psychedelic era's most progressive work, SMiLE. Nor was Love even able to recognize how good it was, attacking both the music and the esoteric lyrics of Van Dyke Parks. We must thank Dominic Priore for giving us an intimate glimpse into one of pop music's most interesting creations, tragically sacrificed because of others short-sightedness. The comfort we get is that the artwork finally saw the light of day, creativity finally triumphed, even if it took almost 40 years for the birth to be complete.
Book Review: SMiLE: The Lost and Found, And How It Re-Happened
Summary: 5 Stars
There has been a lot of speculation about how SMiLE got lost, tied up with how Brian Wilson got "lost." It has become general knowledge in the music world that SMiLE was killed, and Brian's ability to work with his creation, The Beach Boys, was killed off by arguments over whether to stay with the top-20 hits formula. A formula which frankly had run out of gas in the paisley Summer of '66.
Domenic Priore had stumbled onto fragments of the music and story some years back, and started an agitation newsletter to try and kick the music loose and get it on the market. Failing that, he wanted to try and reconstruct the process, and get the sequence right for the underground, which was swapping bootleg fragments and whole movements from SMiLE. The faithful thought enough material was out that if they got the song sequence right, the mystical album that insiders had heard and loved would be availiable to them.
Priore ended up as a once-removed part of the little working group, including Darian Sahanaja of Wondermints, which had coalesced around Brian Wilson as he grew more confident in his life post-marriage, and that put the Brian Wilson Concerts machine together. And eventually, as wife Melinda Ledbetter pointed out to Brian, they had done well over half of the album life in concert anyway to great response from audiences, so why not return to his lost masterwork?
The book is a mix of outsider-in-awe looking back, and insider-helping-restore in the last chapters, as the twinkling magic of SMiLE came first to live audiences in 2004 in England, then to CD players and turntables everywhere. With the fifth leg of the SMiLE tour presently finishing up in Europe, it's a wonderful read for anybody who wanted to know how SMiLE... or The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album... or The Byrds... all clear derivatives of the musical fusion Brian was spreading among the top acts in the mid-60s worldwide... were created.
It's also a good read for a rainy day, provided you are able to get out and buy the SMiLE album (or DVD, to watch a concert presentation of the album) if you don't have it. You will want to, and it is highly recommended. In one year, it has gone top-30 on ultmatecharts.com, and was five star recommended by reviewers from Rolling Stone from, certainly, your local major-city newspaper. Best stuff out there today.
Book Review: Brian knew this book would come out one day, and his song titles tell the tale
Summary: 1 Stars
"Wouldn't it be Nice" if this book had something interesting to say. "You Still Believe in Me", but I don't believe in this book. "Don't Talk" about this book ever again. "I'm Waiting for the Day" when this book goes out of print. "Let's go Away for a While" and only come back when this book is gone. "Sloop John B." should have sank with the manuscript for this book. "God Only Knows" why anyone would buy this book. "I Know There is an Answer" for why anyone would like this book, I just don't know what it is. "Here Today", in the garbage tomorrow. "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times", unfortunately this book was. "Pet Sounds" for me are the ripping or burning of this book. "Caroline No", don't buy this book.
Thanks Brian for trying to warn us all those years ago not to buy this book that you somehow knew would come out 40 years in the future.