On YouTube
On SoundCloud
This episode, we’re enormously privileged to welcome award winning filmmaker and author, David Leaf, to discuss his latest book, SMiLE: The Rise, Fall & Resurrection of Brian Wilson. This celebratory work takes us to the very heart of Brian Wilson’s lost musical masterpiece; its traumatic unravelling in 1967, and the road to a triumphant rebirth in 2004 as an ecstatically received live concert experience and studio album.
David affords us some fascinating, behind the scenes insights into his 2001 television special recorded at Radio City Music Hall, An All-Star Tribute to Brian Wilson, his Grammy-nominated documentary, Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of SMiLE, and talks candidly about some of the life experiences that shaped Brian’s exquisite artistry.
Brian Wilson’s epic journey through the music of SMiLE is a dramatic and inspirational story, and we’re so lucky to learn about it from someone with such a uniquely close and personal perspective, who was critical to bringing SMiLE back to life, and to whom Brian Wilson himself said, ‘I can’t do this unless you’re there with me every day’.
We hope you enjoy our conversation with David Leaf as much as we did.
Special thanks also to our leading contributor, Gary Wells.
(Post edit: We note with sadness Brian’s passing, (announced) June 11, 2025, aged 82)
Companion Newsletter
“…Until 1966, The Beach Boys were known for ‘Fun in the Sun’ music. But bubbling underneath, if one listened to the album tracks, was something else. Something profound. Songs with an intimacy that gave the listener a sense of the troubled heart and mind of the creative force behind the group…”
David Leaf: SMiLE: The Rise, Fall & Resurrection of Brian Wilson
“…The Beach Boys, who released their first record 30 years ago, have been living off their past for so long that it’s easy to hate them for it. It hasn’t helped that the heroes-and-villains saga of the group and its creative soul, Brian Wilson, is as twisted a melodrama as anything in show business, let alone rock & roll…”
Archived 1993 Rolling Stone Review for Good Vibrations: 30 Years of the Beach Boys (Produced by David Leaf)
“…Brian, from anybody I know, who knew him then, has experienced him at any point, talks about him being the sweetest, kindest, nicest person; he just never would say a nasty word to anybody about anything; so you’ve got this giant, brilliant, strong, tall marshmallow, making this beautiful music, and people are lighting matches around him. And he survived it all…”
“…He’s an extraordinarily strong person, he’s an extraordinarily deep person, he just wants to be a regular person. He wants to have dinner, he wants to listen to music, he wants to watch a ballgame, and, oh by the way, along the way (he’s) going to make some of the most beautiful music that’s ever been made. And he’s going to have fun doing it…You listen to the session tapes, you hear a guy who knows exactly what he wants…but he’s not a jerk about it, he’s not a taskmaster about it, he’s just a leader leading his willing troops into this beautiful, melodic battle…”
“…And, along the way, things went terribly awry…”
According to Brian Wilson’s official website, SMiLE was planned to follow The Beach Boys’ 11th studio album, Pet Sounds, and was to be;
“…A twelve-track concept LP assembled from short, interchangeable musical fragments similar to the group’s 1966 single ‘Good Vibrations’. SMiLE was planned to feature word paintings, tape manipulation, elaborate vocal arrangements, experiments with musical acoustics, and comedic interludes, with influences drawn from psychedelia, pre-rock and roll pop, doo-wop, jazz, ragtime, musique concrète, classical, American history, poetry, cartoons, and mysticism...”
The ambitious and highly anticipated project was abandoned in 1967, amid conflicts within The Beach Boys and with Capitol, their record company (with whom litigation was in process), over creative differences, commercial potential, and Brian Wilson’s own mental health crisis.
“I was able to get hold of all these drugs,” Brian Wilson told interviewer Bob Harris in a segment featuring in the 1985 Malcolm Leo documentary The Beach Boys: An American Band, “And they messed me up, they messed my mind up.” Of LSD, Brian said, “It just totally tore my head off.” In separate comments also featured in American Band, Brian said, “I stayed in my room for about three and a half years, I was taking some drugs, you know, and I experimented, and I experimented myself right out of action.”
Brian Wilson has always been breathtakingly honest and open about his drug use, as is David Leaf during our podcast, explaining that Brian was ‘not a person of limits, in terms of his music, his eating, or his drug intake’.
As to the exact role of drugs in the demise of the original SMiLE; like just about everything else, there are conflicting opinions.
Beach Boys mythology suggests Mike Love was the principal, or perhaps only, voice of protest from within the band itself, but the reasons behind the shelving of SMiLE were far more complex.
Brian Wilson said;
“…I’ll tell you from my heart. In 1967, the reasons why I didn’t finish SMiLE was: Mike didn’t like it. I thought it was too experimental. I thought that the ‘Fire’ tape was too scary. I thought that people wouldn’t understand where my head was at, at that time. Those are the reasons...”
We’ve previously noted the existence of wildly conflicting Beach Boys history when it comes to significant events in the life of the band. This particularly applies to the collapse of the original SMiLE sessions, as David Leaf writes in SMiLE: The Rise, Fall & Resurrection of Brian Wilson;
“…But getting to the absolute truth? Well, that’s impossible. It’s kind of like looking at this saga through a kaleidoscope. Each time you turn it, you see Brian’s life and the SMiLE story from a different angle. For me, putting this oral history together was just a bit like SMiLE. Not in terms of its genius, artistry, or ambition, but in the sense of piecing together a story that has a million fragments and so many of them are missing…”
“…Trying to understand what ended the project is like trying to survive in a circular firing squad…”
David quotes Brian’s friend and collaborating lyricist, Van Dyke Parks;
“…I think that Mike Love is the most famous instrument of restraint in the situation to the point that he defeated the process, but he didn’t do it maliciously . . . he couldn’t understand what it was all about. And ultimately, I got to the point where I couldn’t
understand what it was all about…”
Although musical fragments were scattered across Beach Boys records, retrospective compilations and bootlegs, dreams of SMiLE’s completion and a release in its entirety, in sequence as Brian envisaged, had never left the consciousness of fans, including many ardent admirers amongst the world’s leading musical talent.
Brian Wilson’s longer term struggles with mental health have been well documented, so for the purposes of our story here, we’ll fast forward to the early 2000s. Brian had been celebrated in a tribute concert at Radio City Music Hall, (written and produced by David Leaf himself, who gives us some great insights into the difficulties of mounting such a production during the podcast), and was back on the road with a talented and, most importantly, deeply loyal and supportive band, including arranger Darian Sahanaja, whom Rolling Stone describes as ‘Brian Wilson’s secret weapon’.
David explains how a significant moment at a Christmas party at the home of band member Scott Bennett was a turning point in the long and tentative journey towards SMiLE’s revival;
“…In December of 2000 just three months before the tribute, Brian was sitting on the piano bench with his back to the piano, next to my late wife, Eva…and he said to her, What do you want for Christmas? She said for you to play Heroes and Villains, and he said, okay. And he turned around and started playing Heroes and Villains, and it was just staggering, it was just stunning, people came running in from other rooms of Scott’s house to hear what was going on, because up until that moment, if anybody in Brian’s band had mentioned Heroes and Villains, or SMiLE, or any of the songs from SMiLE, he would say, I don’t want to talk about it, it’s inappropriate music, it reminds me of a really bad time in my life. When he finished playing it that night, I said to him, you know, Brian, you really ought to do that at the tribute and he said, okay…”
Some SMiLE tunes began to appear in Brian’s touring set list, but it was ultimately David Leaf and Brian’s wife, Melinda, who convinced him that the time was right to begin work on it again.
Preparations began for the London premiere of Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE, with Van Dyke Parks brought in to contribute additional lyrics. David explains that during early vocal rehearsals, Brian abruptly left the session, a moment that featured in Beautiful Dreamer, but the reality, according to David, was much more serious. Brian was missing for three hours.
“…The reality of performing this music had scared him to the point where he drove himself to the emergency room of St John’s Hospital in Santa Monica…We went there, and we left the hospital, and, it was knowing that he could put a halt to it if he needed to, gave him the confidence, as he would say, the willpower, (my last name is Wilson, I have willpower!) … ‘If I don’t want to do it I don’t have to do it’, but he said, ‘I have to do it’ …”
“…It got better and better and better, to the point where he was actually enjoying rehearsing SMiLE, as he heard it come alive, as he heard that the band could take on this challenge…”
In SMiLE: The Rise, Fall & Resurrection of Brian Wilson, David Leaf asks Brian what was going through his soul leading up to the premiere performances in London;
“…I was going through conniptions. I was going through the worst anxiety I’ve ever been through in my life. So anxious, the anxiety, that I had to really try hard not to be scared. ’Cause I knew we were into something. I knew that. I wasn’t positive of what we were into, but I knew we were into something very special and very meant to be...”
“…And then I got a ten-minute standing ovation, which made it all worth it…”
David observed to Brian that, “It was like we could see the bad vibes leaving your body. Were we imagining that . . . or was that real? Did you feel that at all?”
Brian replied, “That was for real. I felt the peace.”
A theme running through the reemergence of Brian Wilson as a touring and recording artist, and his ability to finally come to grips with the residual pain and trauma of the original SMiLE sessions, is “emotional security”.
David Leaf tells us;
“…Melinda brought a stability to him that he characterised as emotional security. When he said that in an interview in 1995, I was standing to the side while the interview was taking place, and it just reminds me of just how much he can say in so few words. This guy contains multitudes, and he lets it out in four word bursts…Was he cured? No. Was he treated with kindness? Yes. And that was what Melinda brought to his life…”
Melinda Wilson sadly passed away in January 2024, aged 77.
Melinda Wilson Obituaries on (Official) Brian Wilson
David Leaf writes;
“…Looking back at all that transpired – and listening to the music in 2024 – here’s my two cents: It’s inconceivable that the indescribably beautiful and otherworldly melodies and ethereal, magical harmonies of Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE came from one very special mind – Brian Wilson’s. Given all the songs and lyrics and pieces that
were written in 1966-67, and the new material Brian, Van Dyke, and Darian worked on in 2003, it must be noted that the way it was assembled into a three-movement rock opera was absolutely brilliant. I’m so proud that I had a small role in making it happen. Greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life...”
SMiLE: The Rise, Fall & Resurrection of Brian Wilson is published by Omnibus Press.
Very special thanks to David Leaf, to Gary Wells, and to all our readers and listeners
Suggested Further Reference
Playlist (YouTube Official) – Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE
David Leaf (Official) – Bio and Selected Works
(Includes a link to watch David’s fascinating Grammy-nominated documentary film, Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson & the Story of SMiLE, as well as lots more, with links to a comprehensive list of Brian Wilson related media.)
David Leaf Bibliography (Amazon)
David Leaf Interview on (Official) Brian Wilson
Brian Wilson (Official) – Biographical Timeline
(Images and background information covering Brian’s life and work by decade.)
An All-Star Tribute to Brian Wilson (2001) – Cast and crew details at IMDb
Vince Gill, David Crosby and Jimmy Webb Perform Surf’s Up (All-Star Tribute)
Glen Campbell (Official YouTube) – Guess I’m Dumb
The Beatles – She’s Leaving Home
Gary Wells: (Topic) The Beach Boys
Selected Clips
Brian and Heroes & Villains; Art vs Commerce in 1967; LSD Creativity and Regrets; Melinda and emotional security; Brian in 2025 – a friend’s perspective; Brian, friendship and facing the music; A rocky start to rehearsals; An emotional night at Royal Festival Hall; Producing An All-Star Tribute to Brian Wilson; The Beach Boys and career direction, the effect of music streaming.
Please help us to maintain our page quality by reporting any malfunctioning or redundant links.
The DEC4 Podcast by George Fairbrother 