Features

’Cause it’s gettin’ heavy. . .
Well, I thought it was already as heavy as can be
–The Flaming Lips, “Waiting for Superman” (1999)

Wow, it’s been quite a hard week for hardcore music fans like us, hasn’t it? There are few things I can add to the masses of text and tributes circulating the music universe and socials-posting stratosphere right now about Brian Wilson, the musical genius who passed away June 11, 2025, at 82 — and only a few days after Sly Stone passed, also at age 82, on June 9. (Footnote 1) Most of us who are passionate about Brian Wilson’s music are no doubt gutted, and possibly even at a loss for words about it at times. However, I can recount some of my personal experiences which led me to become a deep fan — and, along the way, I’ll also point out some of my favorite recordings of his on vinyl, which might be helpful for those of you trying to figure out how to best listen to Brian Wilson’s rich musical legacy beyond the obvious big hits.

My interest and knowledge of The Beach Boys certainly centered around its co-founder Brian Wilson. I think I became “aware” of them as a group sometime after “Good Vibrations” was released in October 1966. It sounded otherworldly coming out of my little magic transistor radio, as I was 5 or 6 years old when I first heard it. So, while I certainly knew of their big hits as a little kid, my deeper interest in The Beach Boys emerged much later around junior high, after hearing recordings from 1971’s Surf’s Up and 1973’s Holland being played on FM radio — as well as, I think, by some of my older brother’s friends who often visited with new music in hand.

This was also around the time the Endless Summer compilation was released in June 1974, a No. 1-charting hit 2LP set celebrating the band’s early Capitol singles from 1962-65. This album brilliantly reignited public interest in The Beach Boys and their whole California mystique for a whole new generation to embrace. This also somewhat coincided with some collaborations with jazz-rock pioneers Chicago on their seventh release on Columbia, March 1974’s Chicago VII, on which three Beach Boys contributed vocal harmonies.

My very first rock concert ever was seeing both of those bands on the same bill at Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1975! The Beach Boys were great fun — as was Chicago — and I was hooked! A couple years later, I was one of hundreds of thousands who flocked to Central Park for a free Beach Boys concert where Brian performed with the band, rumored to be for the first time in ages. Check out the YouTube clip below for more on that historic event.

By the time I was in college, my fascination and interest in The Beach Boys was escalating. Albums like Pet Sounds, Smiley Smile, Friends, 20/20, and the aforementioned Surf’s Up and Holland all revealed a band as rich as my heroes The Beatles, but with a different world perspective emanating out of California out instead of Liverpool.

This was all great, but it really wasn’t until a mysterious bootleg appeared in many indie record stores post-college, around 1983 or so — one featuring legendary tracks that were supposed to have been destroyed from their long-lost SMiLE album — that my musical passions began turning in a new direction. This music, which I first heard playing in a store, was magical, and I wanted more of it. Brief sidenote: Many underground recordings have circulated among collectors — not to mention reaching the folks in The Wondermints, an L.A. band of fans who eventually befriended Brian and gave him the support and confidence to go back and complete SMiLE in 2004 — but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Anyway, I started digging deeper into The Beach Boys’ catalog, going back to get all the albums including several which included tracks from that “lost” SMiLE album — Smiley Smile, 20/20, and Surf’s Up particular. This music became part of my regular rotation for many, many years. Eventually in later years, through CD bonus tracks and various box sets, I was compiling my own mix tapes of imagined SMiLE sequences from all the available sources. I later found out I was not alone in this passion — for example, AP editor Mike Mettler tells me he did something quite similar! — and apparently there are many much more obsessed compilers than us. (Just search “Mok’s Smile” on the interwebs to get an idea of what I’m talking about here.)

After years of speculation and near-acceptance that Brian Wilson was never going to make new music again, the impossible seemed to happen in 1988. Countering the decades old rumors sensationalizing his fall from pop music grace, suddenly, there was a new, eponymously titled album on Sire that sounded better to me than anything The Beach Boys had released since 1973! Initially, it seemed Brian was back. Well, it was not quite 100-percent back, as we soon learned — despite the brilliance of that album, Brian would need a bit more time to get his life returned to him. And I mean that quite literally, as it is a topic beyond the scope of this article — but for those interested in fully understanding Brian’s saga, I highly recommend you seek out and watch 2014’s incredible biopic, Love & Mercy.

When Brian did more fully return in 2004, fronting a fresh new band and — perhaps more importantly — completely untethered from the restrictive hold of The Beach Boys universe, the impact was spectacular and immediate. At that point, he was touring with super-talented session players who were effectively the equivalent of a small orchestra — a necessity to bring Brian’s rich Phil-Spector-inspired, multi-layered arrangements to life as never before on the concert stage.

I saw Brian and this band many times including at Saratoga, California’s magical outdoor Mountain Winery, where we had 8th row center seats for his first Pet Sounds tour. From the opening notes, I — and many around us — were in tears, because we were seeing and hearing this music come to life before us as never before, and from a man that the music industry had effectively written off as dead. It was an intensely powerful moment.

More tears flowed when we saw Brian perform his eventually completed SMiLE album for us at San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall. It was that powerful, and not only because the music is so beautiful, haunting, and spine-tingling. But also, just because it was evidence of the power of human will — that a man who had been emotionally abused by crackpot doctors and family members with conflicted interests had, against all odds, persevered and was finally winning on his own terms. Brian Wilson was back making music — and for a moment in time, the world appeared to be achieving a special balance which had been missing. (Footnote 2)

It boggles the mind to think what might’ve happened had Brian been able to finish SMiLE back in the 1960s — especially after the glory that was “Good Vibrations,” the above-noted No. 1 October 1966 centerpiece single which, at that time, was the most expensive recording ever made, costing a reported $250,000! Would it have changed the whole face of music as we know it? Would SMiLE have further mitigated the reception and/or creation of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper? We’ll never know. And that’s ancient history at this point anyhow, so it’s moot to bother speculating. Now all we can (and should) do is embrace all that Brian has left us, reveling in the remarkable body of music that he left behind for us all to enjoy on our beloved vinyl. It’s an incredible wealth of sounds and ideas he put forth that still inspires musicians and fans the world over every day.

For those reading this who may still be uncertain about The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson’s popularity/influence (the rest of you can skip ahead!), here’s some data from the bio on their official site, which may offer helpful, additional perspective: “The Beach Boys are one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful bands of all time, with over 100 million records sold worldwide. Between the 1960s and today, the group had over 80 songs chart worldwide, 36 of them in the U.S. Top 40 (the most by a U.S. rock band), and four topping the Billboard Hot 100. Their influence on other artists spans musical genres and movements. Countless artists have cited Pet Sounds as their inspiration for creating their own musical masterpieces. Rolling Stone ranked Pet Sounds No. 2 on its list of the ‘500 Greatest Albums of All Time,’ and The Beach Boys No. 12 on its list of the ‘100 Greatest Artists of All Time.’ Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and recipients of The Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award, The Beach Boys are a beloved American institution that remains iconic around the world.” (So there you have it!)

In the nascent days of my side career as a freelance music writer, one of my early personal triumphs was getting assigned the June 1996 cover feature for the then-popular recording-industry trade publication EQ, celebrating the release of the 4CD box set of Pet Sounds. Titled The Pet Sounds Sessions, that collection was ultimately released by Capitol in 1997, reportedly due to packaging delays. Researching and writing this story for EQ was quite an honor for me. It was also a treat because I received advanced tapes of that set, given the lead-time for print publications back in the day — and, for a moment in time, I felt particularly “inside” the Wilson-verse (if you will), being able to hear this amazing, behind-the-scenes music. For that EQ article, I got to interview some of the project’s producers who made it all come together — including them sharing the making-of background about the core album’s then-new, first-time-ever stereo mix.

So, by now, I suspect you are wondering what my favorite Brian Wilson moments on vinyl are. Of course, I love all those early hits you can hear on the aforementioned Endless Summer collection, and there are many other Beach Boys compilations you can easily find most anywhere you look on the interwebs, and/or at an indie record store near you.

But if you are ready to dig down and explore the genius universe of Brian Wilson, the composer/producer, it’s probably best to begin with March 1965’s The Beach Boys Today!, on Capitol. Notably, listen for key productions like “She Knows Me Too Well” (Side 2, Track 4) and “Please Let Me Wonder” (Side 2, Track 1), which pre-echo the sophisticated soundscapes and lyrical maturity Brian would soon reveal on Pet Sounds. “When I Grow Up” (Side 1, Track 4) introduces unusual structures and even classical instrumentation by way of the harpsichord, which The Beatles’ would also utilize on “In My Life,” on their own December 1965 Capitol LP, Rubber Soul. (The latter was a Bach-inspired solo played at half-speed by producer George Martin on piano, sped up to give it a Baroque feel.)

May 1966’s Pet Sounds is, of course, the essential release to immerse yourself in, if you haven’t already. Frankly, its worthy of an entire article unto itself — and that is in fact a topic which has been covered widely on the interwebs and in print publications for decades, so I won’t go into it much here other than reiterating it is “essential listening.” However, I do recommend you start with Brian’s original mono mix of Pet Sounds first before delving into the later stereo edition — and, by all means, avoid the fake stereo versions from the ’60s marked as “Duophonic,” as they sound awful.

Next, I would jump ahead to February 1969’s 20/20, and also to August 1971’s Surf’s Up. On both of these LPs, you will hear well-produced tracks which were originally intended to be on the aborted follow-on to Pet Sounds, the above-noted SMiLE. On Surf’s Up, for example, you’ll hear a quite magnificent version of the SMiLE centerpiece “Surf’s Up” (Side 2, Track 5), with a then newly recorded gorgeous lead vocal by Carl Wilson. This is a good toe-in-the-water approach to discovering the much more complex and haunting melodies Brian was crafting for that unfinished masterwork (which, again, would not be formally completed until 2004’s Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE and the 1966 Beach Boys SMiLE Sessions that was not officially released until 2011).

As for 20/20, it is a bit of a hodgepodge of tracks that somehow work well together as an album listen. Beyond the great Brian Wilson-penned pop hit “Do It Again” (Side 1, Track 1) and many fine tracks by the other Beach Boys, this album gives us two more SMiLE landmarks repurposed out of their original context: the jaw-dropping a cappella “Our Prayer” (Side 2, Track 5), and the epic “Cabinesssence” (Side 2, Track 6).

Once you’ve, er, hung ten on those albums, I suggest finally diving into all that is SMiLE. It might be easiest to start with September 2004’s Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE (2LPs, on Nonesuch [and, later, Rhino]) before 2011’s The SMiLE Sessions (2LPs, on Capitol). In my book, both releases are important, the sessions offering insight into how far Brian actually got toward completing the album during the original 1966 sessions before it was shelved. Brian’s 2004 completed vision will give you a more complete idea of how all the pieces of the puzzle could come together.

After that, assuming you’ll need more of this music (and you should!), I would revisit the September 1967 Beach Boys LP Smiley Smile, a record that Carl Wilson infamously called “a bunt instead of a grand slam.” This was, of course, issued after the original SMiLE album was aborted, and Brian went into a long period of relative musical and emotional retreat.

Smiley Smile contains different versions of several key SMiLE compositions, notably the epic single “Heroes and Villains” (Side 1, Track 1), as well as the humorous/quirky “Vegetables” (Side 1, Track 2), the eerie “Wind Chimes” (Side 2, Track 3), and mesmerizing “Wonderful” (Side 2, Track 5). This album also includes the classic No. 1 hit single, “Good Vibrations” (Side 2, Track 1). Overall, Smiley Smile bears its own unique sound profile, feeling much more raw — and largely with an almost-DIY home studio aesthetic — than most of Brian’s meticulous productions. It’s almost like it’s The Beach Boys’ “indie rock” album, decades before the concept even existed. Smiley Smile is also home to some post-SMiLE — and very haunting — Brian Wilson tunes, such as “With Me Tonight” (Side 2, Track 2) and “Little Pad” (Side 1, Track 5). I must say, whenever I hear those particular songs, I can’t help but feel the hurt of a man breaking down (which Brian more or less was. at that time).

Do note that original 1967 Capitol pressings of Smiley Smile sound quite murky, so you might do well to explore later reissues, including (gasp!) the 2012 CD reissue, which includes both mono and true stereo mixes (including the latter for “Good Vibrations,” which was only ever previously in mono, as created by using then-new digital extraction technology). Again, this is an instance where it is a good idea avoid those faux-stereo “Duophonic” releases. In fact, I’m thinking I may try to pick up one of the newer Smiley Smile reissues on vinyl soon myself, which are reputed to be quite solid. I haven’t yet heard it myself, but I’m told that the 2016 Analogue Productions reissue of this album is very good. (Footnote 3)

I know many fans revere The Beach Boys’ August 1970 Sunflower album, but I prefer the aforementioned 1971 release Surf’s Up, and January 1973’s Holland. The latter album includes a trippy bonus EP featuring Brian’s story telling (yes, you read that right, a genuine fairy tale!) as a sort of mini concept album titled Mount Vernon and Fairway. Completely surreal, it features some absolutely gorgeous melodic motifs that make it all worthwhile to hear, if just for that payoff.

And if you end up falling in love with those melodies, do seek out Brian’s more recent, and quite lovely instrumental-only At My Piano LP on Decca, where Brian reimagines some of those themes as “Mt Vernon Farewell” (Side 2, Track 7). There are also bonus outtakes from the EP on the 2022 180g 5LP+1EP box set Sail On Sailor – The Beach Boys 1972, which I reviewed here on AP on December 9, 2022. (Footnote 4)

December 1967’s more R&B-focused Wild Honey is another fan favorite worth exploring, as it contains many Brian Wilson classics such as the upbeat “Darlin’” (Side 2, Track 1) and “Here Comes the Night” (Side 2, Track 3). This is another instance where original pressings aren’t necessarily the best sounding (including a rather flat-sounding mono mix). That said, I’ve very much enjoyed Capitol’s 2017 50th Anniversary 180g 1LP reissue that features the album’s first-ever true stereo mix!

Brian’s solo releases are also important to explore, especially the earlier noted July 1988 self-titled Sire LP, Brian Wilson (back cover shown above). This album was later reissued and expanded into a 2LP remixed edition on blue vinyl from Sire/Rhino for November 2015’s Record Store Day, containing many singles and bonus tracks. Despite the challenging circumstances under which this album was made (beneath the divisive thumb of the nightmarish therapist-turned-producer, Eugene Landy), the music Brian made for it ranks among his finest, especially the songs “Love and Mercy” (Side 1, Track 1), “Melt Away” (Side 1, Track 3), and “Let It Shine” (Side 2, Track 2). Try not to tear up hearing the glorious a capella tribute to his perpetual bandmates, “One For The Boys” (Side 1, Track 6), in which Brian layers up all the harmony vocals himself. Simply jaw-dropping.

I also highly recommend a somewhat overlooked tribute album Brian made honoring his idol George Gershwin. To my ear, that August 2010 LP, Reimagines Gershwin (via Disney Pearl Series), plays like a sequel to SMiLE in many ways. It’s also important to note that, for this album, Wilson was granted, by the Gershwin estate, special access to more than 100 unfinished Gershwin songs and fragments to consider for the project. Ultimately, two new songs were completed by Wilson (along with lyricist Scott Bennett), effectively a collaboration between two of the greatest composers of the 20th and 21st centuries! I love this album end to end.

Also be sure to look for Brian’s brilliantly quirky and challenging 1995 collaboration with his SMiLE lyricist partner Van Dyke Parks, Orange Crate Art. Initially only issued on CD by Warner Bros. in October 1995, it was finally remastered and reissued on vinyl by Omnivore in June 2020, sounding much better than the original CD. It’s a fun album to explore, but do note that it is primarily a Van Dyke Parks album. Brian’s singing is layered up in such a dramatic, wildly magnificent manner that it feels, at points, like an alternate-universe Beach Boys recording.

I could go on and on as, believe it or not, this is basically just scraping the surface of Brian Wilson’s musical universe. There is so much joy to be discovered and rediscovered in his 60-plus-year catalog, so don’t hesitate to explore Brian’s many other albums, both solo and with The Beach Boys. The man may be gone from this mortal plane, but his music will live on eternally.

Rest in peace, Brian. I hope you are harmonizing again with your brothers Carl and Dennis, and are also reconnecting with your beloved Melinda on the other side. Thank you again for the music and inspiration.

Mark Smotroff is an avid vinyl collector who has also worked in marketing communications for decades. He has reviewed music for eCoustics, among others, and you can see more of his impressive C.V. at LinkedIn.

Footnote 4: MM, ctd, pt. 2: Mark also reviewed The Very Best of The Beach Boys: The Sounds of Summer 6LP box set here on AP on July 1, 2022.