Michael Anton’s fine essay on the Beach Boys, California culture, and the SMiLE Sessions album is now available on the Claremont Review of Books website. On the merits of SMiLE, compare and contrast his take with my Songbook essay, The SMiLE that Wasn’t.
He doesn’t quite admit that it would have been a failure as pop music even had it been released, although he reminds us that its “Heroes and Villains,” which was released, failed as single. And Anton does not hear what I think I do, that SMiLE did not really achieve what classical composition fairly regularly does. Of course, he has the witness of Wilson himself, Paul McCartney, and even Leonard Bernstein on his side, but I’m stickin’ to my guns.
June 22nd, 2012 | 1:09 pm
Anton’s essay is excellent. “Angelinos worshiped the sun with a fervor not seen since the Temple of Ra.”
The essay gives the impression that the music itself wouldn’t have to achieve as much as pop music, because the times were not dreary.
What do you need the music to do that you can not do for yourself by virtue of being in California at such a time?
Ask not what your music can do for you…
Also I want to know if Anton cares to make the claim that the beach boys invented “American” exceptionalism. You know that California exceptionalism you can hear in California Girls or California Dreamin’.
It isn’t the music, it is California as a place. It isn’t the music it is the girl, it isn’t the church, it is LA.