Smile
In February 1966, Parks became acquainted socially with Brian Wilson. In his 1991 autobiography Wouldn't It Be Nice, Wilson gives his first impressions of Parks being "a skinny kid with a unique perspective", and that he "had a fondness for amphetamines" at the time. Unsatisfied with Pet Sounds collaborator Tony Asher's lyrics for "Good Vibrations", Wilson first asked Parks to help him re-write the lyrics to the song; Parks refused, stating, "No sense walking into someone else's problem." During the recording of "Good Vibrations" in 1966, Parks suggested to Brian Wilson that he have cellos playing eighth notes.
However, Brian Wilson soon convinced Parks to write lyrics for the Beach Boys' next LP, the ambitious but ill-fated Smile. In preparation for the writing and recording of the album, Wilson purchased several thousand dollars worth of marijuana and hashish, and also joined Parks in popping "fistfuls of Desputols (amphetamines)". Several members of the Beach Boys strongly opposed Smile, notably Wilson's former collaborator Mike Love, who derided Parks' lyrics as "Acid Alliteration".
The bitter resistance from the group and their record company had a strong negative effect on Wilson's increasingly fragile mental state (which may also have been exacerbated by drug use). Following a December 1966 recording session in which he was involved in a heated argument with Mike Love (who vehemently criticized his lyrics for the song "Cabin Essence") Parks' involvement in Smile effectively ceased and he officially withdrew from the project in early 1967. Recording sessions ground to a halt soon after, as Wilson became increasingly withdrawn, and the album was shelved a few months later.
Several complete Wilson/Parks songs and other musical fragments written for Smile subsequently appeared on the Beach Boys' "replacement" album Smiley Smile, including "Heroes and Villains" and "Wind Chimes", although most were re-recorded in drastically scaled-down arrangements. Two other key songs written and recorded for Smile -- "Cabin Essence" and "Surf's Up" -- were compiled by Carl Wilson and included on the 20/20 and Surf's Up LPs in more or less the same form as Wilson had intended them for Smile, while the song "Cool Cool Water" (an extended track built around the Smile fragment "I love to say Dada") later appeared on the Sunflower album.
Smile acquired legendary status as one of the great lost works of Sixties pop, and although fragments were subsequently issued in various forms over the years, the form and exact content of the work as Wilson and Parks had conceived it remained hotly debated. Public interest in Smile was greatly revived by the release of a significant cache of recordings from the original Smile sessions on the Beach Boys 30th anniversary boxed set in 1993.
In 2004, following the great success of his acclaimed live performances of the Beach Boys Pet Sounds album, and with the support of his band's musical director Darian Sahanaja, Wilson made the surprise announcement that he was going to finish the mythical record using his current touring band. He contacted Parks, who helped fill in gaps in the original lyrics, and the duo re-recorded the album and then presented it on a world tour, beginning with the world premiere performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London, which Parks attended.
In November 2011, after 44 years, a compilation of sessions from The Beach Boys' Smile was finally released by Capitol Records.
Read more about this topic: Van Dyke Parks