The Smile Sessions – Beach Boys

“The Smile Sessions is a compilation album and box set recorded by American rock band the Beach Boys, released on October 31, 2011 by Capitol Records. The set focuses on abandoned recording sessions from their unfinished 1966–67 album Smile which would have followed the group’s 11th studio album Pet Sounds. It features comprehensive session highlights and outtakes, and the first 19 tracks comprise an approximation of what the completed album might have sounded like. The compilation is the first and only package devoted to the 1960s Smile recordings originally produced by Brian Wilson, arriving after decades of public anticipation and numerous false starts. The project was led primarily by audio engineers Alan Boyd, Mark Linett, and Capitol A&R director Dennis Wolfe, with Wilson acting as a remote supervisor, assisting the engineers with some mixing decisions.  … Work on what would have been the original Beach Boys version of Smile began in 1966, following the release of their album Pet Sounds, and based on the complex engineering methods of their single ‘Good Vibrations‘. After Wilson abandoned the project, sporadic attempts would be made over the next few decades to either finish or release the album as it was. During this time, recordings from the sessions had surfaced in underground trading circles and became a focal point for bootleg recording makers and collectors. Plans for a Smile archival release go back to at least early 1980s, when it was proposed that the album be issued in some form by Wilson or compilers. In his 1978 biography The Beach Boys and the California Myth, David Leaf wrote that Smile ‘can never be completed as Brian intended, so a compromise solution might be to release the surviving tapes and outtakes in a series of records called The Smile Sessions [like] Elvis‘ Sun Sessions. In 1993, an official release of some archival Smile material was included on the box set Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of The Beach Boys. In 1997, Capitol Records issued The Pet Sounds Sessions, which featured an assortment of alternate mixes and highlights of the Pet Sounds recording sessions spread over four CDs. This caused speculation that an official Smile release was imminent, but it never materialized. Though certain fragments of the original Smile recording sessions leaked via studio albums, compilations and bootlegs, a comprehensive and official package was never compiled by Capitol Records. …”
W – The Smile Sessions
Surf’s Up! The Beach Boys Smile Sessions
My God, my God … The Beach Boys: “The SMiLE Sessions” (Capitol)
The Beach Boys’ ‘Smile:’ Everything We Know About The ‘Lost’ Masterpiece
Discogs
YouTube: The Smile Sessions 40 videos, YouTube: The Smile Sessions 139 videos

“Quiet, numbskull! We’re making a masterpiece!” Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks …