8 – Heroes and Villains – Brian Wilson – 2004
“Heroes and Villains” was to be the centerpiece for Smile and Brian hoped it would be as successful as “Good Vibrations”, a number one hit for the Beach Boys. According to legend, it was composed on a piano he had set up in a sandbox in his living room.
Though this version is from the long awaited, reconstructed, non-Beach Boy, SMILE album of 2004, it always brings me back to 1975, when I was going away to school in Carlinville, Illinois, to Blackburn College. It was roughly a 5-hour drive from Algonquin and I remember listening to a radio show with Charlie Van Dyke, a history of the Beach Boys. (I could be wrong about the time frame, but since this whole exercise is one of memory and feelings and whether or not it was on the first trip down to BU or a subsequent one, it brings back the memory of that first trip, the first time in my life I was going to be truly separated from my family and friends at home).
I was being driven by my folks, in the old Ford LTD we had at the time, towing a snowmobile trailer with my Honda CL350 strapped to it, my transportation for the first year in Carlinville.
I think this radio show was part of the run-up to the first of the 15 or 20 “Brian’s back!” campaigns that have occurred in the past 35 years.
The run-up may even have started as early as 1974 with the release of “Endless Summer”, a double album of early BB tunes that I bought based on a review in Rolling Stone. Other than the single of “Good Vibrations”, I had never owned any of the BB oeuvre.
However, by 1975 I had purchased several more of the BB albums and had become a fan, and in 1976 Brian was on the cover of Rolling Stone in his bathrobe, standing on a beach holding up a surfboard. In August 1976 he appeared in a Lorne Michaels-produced special in NBC prime time and in one skit was “arrested” by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd for “failure to surf.” He was dragged out to the beach in the same bathrobe, with the same surfboard as the Rolling Stone cover (obviously the photo shoot for RS was done when the special was being shot).
Hilarity failed to ensue.
In November of 1976 he capped this particular comeback with the single most excruciating performance I have ever witnessed, on an SNL hosted by Jodie Foster.
“Good Vibrations”, a masterpiece of pop that required 17 sessions in four different studios, amassing 90 hours of tape, at a total cost of $50,000, assembled piece by loving piece, was reduced to Brian, singing by himself, playing a piano in a sandbox.
ARRGGH!!!
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