But he also wrote Smart Girls… a song I would have all but forgotten about if I hadn’t been
recording a podcast with The Squire recently.
Brian is a troubled soul; his mid-60s meltdown caused the
abandonment of the Beach Boys’ Smile project
(an approximation of this missing album finally surfaced in 2011 as part of the
essential Smile Sessions box
set), signalled the end of the Beach Boys as a major chart act and would lead
to decades of pain for him and his family, years of substance abuse, and
periods of virtual house arrest from his controversial therapist Eugene Landy
before he finally re-emerged in 1988 with the rather wonderful Brian
Wilson album an its’ hit single Love and
Mercy. He’s since toured the world – both solo and with the band he
founded – to great acclaim and released several albums of new and re-worked
material.
Following the release of Brian Wilson he set to work on a second solo alum, originally to
be titled Brian. He has said that
the master tapes from the project – later titled Sweet Insanity - were stolen, although the songs were prepared for
release (cassette promos exist) and have since appeared on numerous bootlegs.
Five of the songs from the sessions were rerecorded and released on his 2004
album Gettin' in Over My Head,
and one - The Spirit of Rock and Roll - which featured Bob Dylan
on vocals, eventually turned up on the hard-to-find 2006 Beach Boys album Songs
from Here & Back. However several of
the songs remain officially unreleased to this day including the track I
present for you here, Brian’s misjudged attempt at rap, Smart Girls. I’m
breaking with tradition slightly by bringing you a recording that hasn’t
officially seen the light of day, but I thought you’d enjoy it anyway.
Smart Girls – with a
co-writer credit to Landy - was produced by Matt Dike, the co-founder of
Delicious Vinyl and part of the production team behind hits by Tone Loc and
Young MC, who chose to sample bits of earlier Beach Boys hits and sprinkle them
liberally throughout the song. Wilson played the song on the air during an
interview on Dr. Demento's show in 1992.
"Sweet Insanity
was never really released,” Wilson said in
an interview earlier this year. “You’ve got bootlegs, but it was
never released. And I thought some of the stuff was pretty good. It wasn’t the
best album I ever wrote. We just didn’t think it was good enough. They were
just like demos. We recorded about 10-12 songs, and we decided not to put it
because we thought that maybe people wouldn’t like it, so we junked it."
Good choice, Brian. The interviewer, Dave Herrera of the Las
Vegas Review-Journal, asked Brian about Smart Girls: “Was that just you fooling around and having a
good time?”
“Yeah, we were just having a good time,” Brian answered. “It was fun. We were just
kidding. I felt like I was going in the right direction. I thought if I added a
little bit more harmony, that people would like (that). Harmony is something that people love.”
Enjoy!
This could almost have slid off the first Justified Ancients of Mu Mu album if Bill and Jimi had kidnapped Brian Wilson for half an hour. I had NO idea this existed. I am utterly speechless.
ReplyDeleteIt is wonderful and wonderless in some kind of equal measure
Thank you!.
You're more than welcome!
DeleteI am so transfixed by the samples that I have absolutely no idea what the lyrics are, and what the rap is about!
ReplyDelete