Улыбка сквозь слезы: История альбома Smiley Smile

Smiley Smile is the 12th studio album by the American rock band the Beach Boys, released on September 18, 1967. Conceived as a simpler and more relaxed version of their unfinished Smile album, Smiley Smile is distinguished for its homespun arrangements, "stoned" aesthetic, and lo fi production. Critics and fans generally received the album and its lead single, "Heroes and Villains", with confusion and disappointment. The album reached number 9 on UK record charts, but sold poorly in the U. S., peaking at number 41—the band's lowest chart placement to that point. Following principal songwriter Brian Wilson's declaration that most of the original Smile tapes would be abandoned, the majority of the recording sessions lasted for six weeks at his makeshift home studio using radio broadcasting equipment, a detuned piano, electronic bass, melodica, found objects for percussion, and a Baldwin theater organ. The unconventional recording process juxtaposed an experimental party like atmosphere with short pieces of music edited together in a disjointed manner, combining the engineering methods of "Good Vibrations" (1966) with the loose feeling of Beach Boys' Party! (1965). Despite leading these sessions, Wilson deliberately credited the album's production to the group collectively for the first time. From late 1966 to mid 1967, Smile had been repeatedly delayed while the Beach Boys were subject to a considerable level of media hype proclaiming Wilson to be a "genius". After settling payment disputes with Capitol Records, Smiley Smile was distributed in collaboration with Brother Records, the band's new self owned record company. A second single, "Gettin' Hungry", was credited to Wilson and Mike Love and failed to chart. Smile was left incomplete as the band immediately moved onto the recording of Lei'd in Hawaii, an unfinished live album featuring performances in the style of Smiley Smile, and Wild Honey, released in December 1967. Smiley Smile has since become a critical and cult favorite, influencing the development of the lo fi, ambient, and bedroom pop genres. It is often regarded as one of the finest chill out albums for having positive effects on listeners experiencing an LSD comedown, a usage adopted by at least one drug clinic. In 1974, it was ranked number 64 in NMEs list of the greatest albums of all time. Outtakes and session highlights from the album were included on the compilations The Smile Sessions (2011) and 1967 – Sunshine Tomorrow (2017).

The Beach Boys' album Pet Sounds, issued on May 16, 1966, was massively influential upon its release, containing lush and sophisticated orchestral arrangements that raised the band's prestige to the top level of rock innovators. Early reviews for the album in the US ranged from negative to tentatively positive, but the reception from music journalists in the UK was very favorable. The group had recently employed the Beatles' former press officer Derek Taylor as their publicist. Bothered by the popular view of the Beach Boys as outdated surfers, leader and songwriter Brian Wilson requested that Taylor establish a new image for the band as fashionable counterculture icons, resulting in Taylor spearheading a media campaign with the tagline "Brian Wilson is a genius". In October 1966, the group followed up Pet Sounds with "Good Vibrations", a laboriously produced single that achieved major international success. By then, an album titled Smile had been conceived as an extension of that song's recording approach, with Wilson composing music in collaboration with lyricist Van Dyke Parks. Wilson envisioned Smile as an outlet for all of his intellectual occupations, such as his fascination with spirituality and its relationship to humor and laughter. He told Melody Maker: "Our new album will be better than Pet Sounds. It will be as much an improvement over Sounds as that was over [our 1965 album] Summer Days." By the end of the year, NME conducted an annual reader's poll that placed the Beach Boys as the world's top vocal group, ahead of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Business partner David Anderle attempted to form Brother Records, an independent label, with the intention of giving "entirely new concepts to the recording industry, and to give the Beach Boys total creative and promotional control over their product." A February 1967 lawsuit seeking $255,000 (equivalent to $ in ) was launched against Capitol Records over neglected royalty payments. Within the lawsuit, there was also an attempt to terminate the band's contract with Capitol before its November 1969 expiration. In April 1967, Wilson and his wife put their Beverly Hills home up for sale and took residence at a newly purchased mansion in Bel Air. Wilson also set to work on constructing a personal home studio. Parks permanently withdrew from the project in April, with Anderle following suit weeks later. Between mid April and early May, Wilson took a four week break from studio recording. On April 26, Carl Wilson was arrested for refusing his draft into the US Army and later released on bail. On April 28, in an effort to promote the group's upcoming UK tour, EMI issued the single "Then I Kissed Her" to the chagrin of the band, who did not approve the release. On May 6, a week after stating that Smile was to be released "any moment", Taylor announced in Disc & Music Echo that the album had been "scrapped" by Wilson. However, Taylor's assertion of the album's cancellation at that point was likely to be spurious. The Beach Boys were still under pressure and a contractual obligation to deliver an album to Capitol. For most of May, the touring group embarked on a run of shows in Europe while Brian resumed scheduling recording sessions at professional studios, some of which were cancelled on short notice. Throughout 1967, Wilson's public image was reduced to that of an "eccentric" figure as a multitude of revolutionary rock albums were released to an anxious and maturing youth market. For a time, the Beach Boys had been the Beatles' chief rivals, By June, Wilson declared to his bandmates that most of the material recorded for Smile would be abandoned. In an interview conducted in January 1968, he intimated that he had run out of ideas "in a conventional sense" and had been "about ready to die" before Smiley Smile. He said: "I decided not to try any more, and not try and do such great things."

Carl Wilson famously compared Smiley Smile to "a bunt instead of a grand slam". From the vast sum of material Brian had recorded for Smile, only portions of the backing track for "Heroes and Villains" (recorded October 1966) and the coda for "Vegetables" (recorded April 1967) were used for Smiley Smile. Comparing Brian's original Smile mixes with the Smiley Smile version of "Heroes and Villains", Al Jardine called it "a pale facsimile  Brian re invented the song for this record  He purposefully under produced the song." "With Me Tonight" is a variation on "Vegetables", and "Fall Breaks and Back to Winter (W. Woodpecker Symphony)" lifts a recurring melodic hook from "Fire". refn|group=nb|The new "Wind Chimes" coda also shares the same melody as the ending of "Holidays", a Smile instrumental, while "Fall Breaks and Back to Winter" recycles the music quotation of Woody Woodpecker's laugh heard in "Surf's Up".

Smiley Smile was recorded with an eight track tape machine, with all the different musical sections spread out across numerous reels of tape. In other words, intros, verses, choruses, and endings were each allocated their own reel. The Beach Boys recorded using what was predominantly radio broadcasting equipment, which lacked many of the technical elements and effects found in an established studio. The studio set up at Brian's house was, in its mid 1967 incarnation for Smiley Smile, in its infancy. Due to the sporadic nature at which Brian decided to produce the record at his home, there was little time to fully outfit the Bel Air residence as a properly equipped recording studio. Tracks were typically constructed around a performance of Wilson playing piano that was usually mixed out of the final recording. This process was equivalent to the use of click tracks a decade before they were common. Some recording accidents were used to their advantage, such as in "With Me Tonight", which contains an informal link between the verse and chorus by way of a voice saying "good", as in "good take", spoken by the band's friend Arny Geller from the control room. The home set up was moved between different areas as the sessions progressed. This led to unconventional ways of achieving particular sounds at the home, such as a replacement for what would be achieved by an echo chamber. The album's engineer Jim Lockert recalled how "Brian's swimming pool had a leak in it and was empty, so we put a microphone in the bottom of this damn near Olympic size pool and the guys laid down inside the pool and sang so the sound would go down the wall of the concrete pool into the microphone – and that was part of the vocals on one of those songs." Some vocals were also tracked in the shower. Lockert detailed a unique and labor intensive process for the final mixing session of the album that began at five o'clock one evening and concluded the following morning at Wally Heider's Studio 3 in Hollywood. The mixing strategy involved sequentially mixing the introduction and first verse of each song directly to a two track tape. Rather than creating copies for assembly, the team would then erase the vocals from the mixed segment, record the harmony and lead parts for the subsequent verse, and mix it down to the same tape. This meticulous approach was repeated for each section of the song, ensuring that by the end of the session, the album was fully mixed and edited. Lockert recalled, "One of the guys from Wally Heider was my second engineer and he said, 'Well, I never believed in miracles but I saw one tonight.' That’s the way they did it. It wasn't my idea. They mixed it chorus and verse, chorus and verse and intro, and all the levels had to match."

The Beach Boys were initially involved in the conception of the Monterey Pop Festival, which was held in June 1967. At the last minute, the band announced that they could not appear at the festival for reasons pertaining to Carl's military draft and their commitments to finish "Heroes and Villains" for Capitol. Derek Taylor, who had terminated his employment with the group to focus on the festival's organization, remembered that dropping out of the program "undoubtedly set the band in a very bad light. They were certainly heavily criticized at the time for it. It seemed rather like an admission of defeat." Biographer David Leaf explained: "Monterey was a gathering place for the 'far out' sounds of the 'new' rock and it is thought that this non appearance was what really turned the 'underground' tide against them." An official announcement of the resolution was made on July 18. Capitol A&R director Karl Engemann began circulating a memo, dated July 25, in which Smiley Smile was referred to as a stopgap for Smile. The memo also discussed conversations between him and Wilson pertaining to the release of a 10 track Smile album, which would not have included the songs "Heroes and Villains" or "Vegetables". In July, two singles were issued on the Brother imprint: "Heroes and Villains" and "Gettin' Hungry". The former peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. The latter was not credited to the Beach Boys, but instead to Brian Wilson and Mike Love. Smile was never delivered; instead, the group played two shows at an auditorium in Honolulu, which were filmed and recorded with the intention of releasing a live album, Lei'd in Hawaii. On stage, the band performed "Heroes and Villains" and "Gettin' Hungry", and rearranged their past hits in the style of Smiley Smile. Priore writes that the engagement was effectively the band's "attempt to make up" for cancelling their gig at Monterey. Bruce Johnston, who was absent for most of the Smiley Smile recording sessions, did not accompany the group, although Brian did. In early August, Johnston told the British press that he had heard Smiley Smile, and when asked about Smile, said that the album would be released "within the next two months." On September 18, 1967, Smiley Smile was released in the US. The LP peaked at number 41 on the Billboard charts, making it their worst selling album to that date. It spent most of its 21 week chart time bubbling under 100 and 197. When released in the UK in November, it performed better, reaching number 9 of the UK Albums Chart. During their annual Thanksgiving tour of the US, the band did not perform any of the tracks on Smiley Smile except "Good Vibrations". In a December interview, Mike Love acknowledged that Smiley Smile had "baffled and mystified" the public and that the band "had this feeling that we were going too far, losing touch I guess." He promised that their next album, then slated to be Wild Honey, would bring the group "back more into reality".

In the description of journalist Nick Kent, Smiley Smile "appeared like the single most underwhelming musical statement of the sixties". It was a "major disappointment" for fans, many of whom had expected a work similar to Pet Sounds and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper. More favorably, Record Mirrors Wesley Laine predicted that Smiley Smile would "probably go to the top of the LP charts". He felt that it contained better songs "on the whole" than Pet Sounds, as well as "extremely clever and insiduous production and arrangements [that] fall into the current psychedelic bag without being blatantly acidy." The Milwaukee Sentinel praised the LP as "probably the most valuable contribution to rock since the Beatles Revolver" and for being unlike anything the Beatles had done. In his May 1968 column in Esquire, Robert Christgau praised the minimalism of Smiley Smile, characterizing the record as "slight" and calling the deliberately uncommercial sound of the album "unique and almost perfect". Controversy involving whether the band was to be taken as a serious rock group followed them into the next year. On December 14, 1967, Rolling Stone editor and co founder Jann Wenner printed an influential article that denounced Wilson's "genius" label, which he called a "promotional shuck", and the Beach Boys themselves, which he called "one prominent example of a group that has gotten hung up on trying to catch The Beatles". He wrote that "for some reason, [Smiley Smile] just doesn't make it  [the songs] just don't move you. Other than displaying Brian Wilson's virtuosity for production, they are pointless." In February 1968, a Rolling Stone reviewer referred to the album as a "disaster" and an "abortive attempt to match the talents of Lennon and McCartney."

Smiley Smile became the first in a three part series of lo fi Beach Boys albums (preceding Wild Honey and Friends) Dennis Wilson said, "It was not as ambitious as Pet Sounds was. But I listened to it in a jungle in Africa and it sounded great." Conversely, Al Jardine felt that "there are some pretty cool songs on that album but I didn't like rehashing some of the Smile songs. That didn't work for me." In 2017, additional session highlights from the album were released on the rarities compilation 1967 – Sunshine Tomorrow. The compilation was followed several months later with two more digital exclusive releases: 1967 – Sunshine Tomorrow 2: The Studio Sessions and 1967 – Live Sunshine.

Smiley Smile has since become a cult and critical favorite in the Beach Boys' catalog. In biographer Peter Ames Carlin's estimation, "the album's reputation improved with hindsight", particularly after the release of "stripped down warts and all albums" by other artists, including Bob Dylan (John Wesley Harding, 1967) and the Beatles (The White Album, 1968). Writing in 1971, Melody Makers Richard Williams referred to Smiley Smile as "The Great Undiscovered Pop Album", one that had been "either ignored or dismissed by the reviewers." The album's prevailing negative response mellowed after the record was reissued in 1974 – the same year that the staff of NME ranked it as the 62nd greatest album of all time. Since the mid 1970s, the album has developed a following that appreciates the distinct qualities of its low fidelity production, positioning it as an essential entry in Wilson's oeuvre. It is considered a masterwork among fans of lo fi art. Reviewing the album for AllMusic, Richie Unterberger called it a "rather nifty, if rather slight, effort that's plenty weird". Pastes Bryan Rolli ranked it at number 2 in a list of the "10 Most Disappointing Follow Up Albums", calling it a "disjointed collection of minimalist recordings and a capella bits that are not so much songs as fragments of a shattered psyche". In the 2004 edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide, the reviewer described Smiley Smile as "inconsistent" and said that, given the context of its release in September 1967, "the album was like a strange throwback – it highlighted how out of touch these suburban California surfers had become with the psychedelic times." In his 2007 book The Act You've Known for All These Years: The Life, and Afterlife, of Sgt. Pepper, Clinton Heylin writes that the album "sounded like a [throwaway] contractual obligation" and, together with its commercial failure, confirmed "one of the most spectacular falls from grace of any sixties band". In the 2000s, Smiley Smile began to be included in lists of "must hear" albums compiled by various publications. In 2000, it was ranked number 415 in Colin Larkin's book of the All Time Top 1000 Albums. In a 2007 issue of Rolling Stone, Robert Christgau and David Fricke named it one of the 40 essential albums of 1967; Christgau declared: "Towering it's not; some kind of hit it is." In 2017, it was ranked number 118 on Pitchforks list of greatest albums of the 1960s, where it was described as having "developed a small cult of its own, attracting those drawn to its stripped down, highly spontaneous, and deeply stoned vibe." Music theorist Daniel Harrison writes that Smiley Smile may be regarded as a piece akin to art music within the Western classical tradition, highlighting its pioneering contributions to the rock genre as comparable to the introduction of unconventional techniques, such as atonality, in classical music. Writing in 1971, Richard Williams felt that the album's disjointed and fragmentary approach had "all the epigrammatic, enigmatic power of Japanese haiku", containing 'passages written in the conditional tense (i. e. the songs move easily between reality and fantasy), a technique evolved by Godard in the cinema and which only Wilson, as far as I know, has picked up in pop." The New York Observers Ron Hart wrote that Smiley Smile had effectively presaged the work of Harry Nilsson, Elvis Costello, Stereolab, the High Llamas, the Olivia Tremor Control, and Father John Misty. Dedicated tribute albums include Smiling Pets (1998) and Portland Sings The Beach Boys "Smiley Smile" (2013). Other admirers of the album have included Pete Townshend of the Who and Robbie Robertson of the Band. and it was a direct inspiration for his song "Season Cycle" (Skylarking, 1986). In an interview with Time, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith stated that his "island" music picks include Smiley Smile, "Just for the melodic fuck all." Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka, composers for the Japanese role playing video game series Mother, cited Smiley Smile among influences on the games' soundtracks. Comedian Trevor Moore stated that the theme song for his troupe's television show, The Whitest Kids U' Know, was based on "Little Pad", which itself had been used as the opening theme for their live shows.