2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Evening Standard
Brian Wilson's 10 best tracks (and the stories behind them)
So after Pet Sounds, and after the single Good Vibrations that's when it all started to go wrong for Wilson. The follow-up album - started the same year, 1966, as those landmark releases, such was the pace of creation at the time - was called Smile and was set to take the Beach Boys' music to even more ambitious heights with a concept album about American history, with a mash of high and low styles, with Wilson describing it as a 'teenage symphony to God.' By this stage he had been regularly seeking enlightenment with heavy LSD trips but also trying to capture bad trips on record, as with the track The Elements: Fire, but began to get spooked about the 'witchcraft music.' He had made everyone wear fireman's helmets during the recording and filled the studio with smoke. But when he heard a local building had burnt down, he thought it was his fault and stopped the recording.
