The Smile sessions were NOT written, arranged, and recorded by a drug-addled, paranoid recluse whose bad LSD trips had clouded his judgment. Done right, Smile could have tossed Pet Sounds around like a tidal wave, and maybe even made the Beatles yearn for yesterday. Though we’ll never know the answer to the mystery of what might have been, this collection gives us our best guess, while at the same time shattering any myths about what was assumed never could be.

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But this is no love letter, no indictment, but a cinematic diary putting into verse the panic America shared in our last great collective cry: “WAAAAALL STREEEEEET” he wails (surely nodding to the Song Cycle opener of the “Vine” variety), adding “And in the confetti is human desire. Love-letters lost in space, now smoking.”

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Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks messing around while recording Smile.

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Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s first job was a rodeo hand after he ran away from his childhood home in Brooklyn. Not long after, he apprenticed under Woody Guthrie. Not long after that, Bob Dylan apprenticed under Jack. His newest album A Stranger Here (out now on Anti) is made up of blues standards and features Van Dyke Parks on piano. He had his hip replaced just last week. This interview by Kevin Ferguson.

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Dan Monick

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