Lewis Shiner, in his novel "Glimpses," about a time-traveling stereo repairman who can conjure the great lost rock albums by visiting their sessions, posits that Wilson had a moment of true inspiration with "Smile" and simply lingered too long in capturing it.

"Glimpses" is an exhilarating read, and absorbing oneself in books like Priore's and Shiner's is a good way to begin to understand what the album might have been. From there, a true "Smile" fanatic intent on unearthing the possibilities of the past might -- in one obsessive burst -- pour through the accumulated bootlegs, listen with Wilson and Parks' concepts in mind, match melodies to ideas like an archaeologist reassembling a crumbled pediment, feed the remains into the computer, and chop and paste for hours, naming the different sections based on lyrics and scenes ("In the cantina...") and jury-rigged classifications ("American pastoral"), until "Smile" eased its way back into existence.

"It was getting to me psychologically," said Mark Spano, an audio engineer who put together his own "Smile." "I started to feel very frustrated. And if I was getting down, I could only imagine what Brian must have felt." Spano called on all his expertise to make his version of "Smile." "Pitch correction, time compression, whatever it took, I had to do it, just to see if it could be done."

Listening to the "Smile" sessions is a revelation. It's startling to suddenly realize that one can actually hear Wilson at work in stunning stereo fidelity, the music warbling like a time machine in reentry as the reel-to-reel flutters on and off at the end of each segment. The sections flit by, melodic idea after melodic idea -- cinematic fantasias, folk songs, barbershop vocal arrangements -- Main Street USA rendering itself in vivid psychedelic color. "Smile" is the album you'd want with you while doing serious drugs at Disneyland. But who would want to do that? Nonetheless, "Smile" makes the prospect alluring.

Paul Williams, who -- as a teenager -- founded the pre-Rolling Stone rock magazine Crawdaddy and visited Wilson in Los Angeles over Christmas 1966, explains the genesis of the "Smile" myth, which he helped perpetuate in his magazine and his book "How Deep Is the Ocean?": "I think that the basic enthusiasm of people like [writer] Richard Goldstein and me and others who heard parts of 'Smile' when it was being recorded [was over] the beauty of individual small pieces, movements, of music that Brian had executed in parts in the studio. [They were] breath-taking and inspiring."

Williams, who went nearly 20 years between his initial encounter with "Smile" and his next hearing of the tapes, says he is "happy with ... fragments that were not attempts to actually be an album sequence, though I totally empathize with and respect fans [who compile their own versions of the album]. It's part of the game, like Mr. Potato Head: Here are the pieces, now make your own 'Smile.' It's partly as though everybody's given a few of the elements and then they're told, 'This was intended to be something great,' and they naturally project what it could be based on their enthusiasm for what they've heard."

They likely also project their notions of what a great album should be, fitting (and forcing) the "Smile" tracks over ideas of album flow that didn't yet exist in 1966: what should be positioned where and how. If somebody thinks a great album should segue from track to track, with a quiet song at the end of Side 1, then -- by golly -- his "Smile" will segue from track to track with a quiet song at the end of Side 1 (probably "Wonderful").

With file-trading protocols like BitTorrent making it easier to distribute new editions of "Smile" en masse, and technologies like Apple's GarageBand making it easier to recombine them, one can easily imagine one's own "Smile" being sent out into the world and finding its way back. It gives literal meaning to the fairly hokey quote Wilson added to the back cover of "Smiley Smile," the half-assed album the Beach Boys put out instead of "Smile" in 1967 ("a bunt instead of a grand slam," admitted Carl Wilson): "The Smile That You Send Out Returns to You." "Smile," then, is a reflection of what makes listeners happy, which is what Wilson intended to begin with.

But Wilson, who has in recent years been playing with the '60s pop revivalists the Wondermints, has been reluctant to perform material from "Smile" himself. "He said it reminded him of a bad time and just didn't want touch it," says Wondermints multi-instrumentalist Probyn Gregory. "Finally, we started sneaking a few of the songs into the set, easing them in."

Then, last fall, Gregory says, "Van Dyke Parks and Brian got together and finished up some of the fragments and added some things. They put some melodies to unfinished tracks, and words to some things that hadn't had words put on them. And it all sounds like it's a part of the piece, part of the period."

Gregory is reserved about the prospects of making a definitive "Smile" record. "I was against the recording of 'Pet Sounds Live!' for the same reason," he asserts. "No one will ever sound like the Beach Boys. We're trying to be as faithful as possible, but please don't compare us vocally to the Beach Boys, or to the Wrecking Crew, or to the sound of those microphones, or anything [Brian] did down at Western Recorders back in the old days."

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