page_title: Collapse of Smile
section_title: Growing band tensions
hierarchical_section_title: Collapse of Smile / Growing band tensions
caption_attribution_description: English: c. 1970 press photo of the Beach Boys
context_page_description: The Beach Boys' failure to complete the album Smile is often reported as a pivotal episode marking the professional decline of the band and its leader Brian Wilson. Some of the difficulties and pressures surrounding the album's making included its cumbersome editing process, concerns over its potential reception, the Wilson family's resentment of Brian's new social circle, Carl Wilson's arrest for draft evasion, the band's attempt to terminate their contract with Capitol Records, their heavy marijuana consumption, and Brian's escalating mental health issues and creative dissatisfaction.
  The original Smile sessions lasted from August 1966 to May 1967. Brian produced and completed most of the album's backing tracks by December 1966. When the Beach Boys returned from a month-long tour of Europe, they were confused by the new music and the new coterie of interlopers that surrounded him. After missing a January 1967 deadline, the album's release date was repeatedly postponed as he tinkered with the recordings, experimenting with different takes and mixes, unable or unwilling to supply a completed version of the album.
context_section_description: The Beach Boys' album Pet Sounds, issued on May 16, 1966, was massively influential upon its release, containing lush and sophisticated orchestral arrangements that raised the band's prestige as rock innovators. Much to the band's disdain, Capitol Records continued promoting the Beach Boys as a surfing group. Wilson requested that Taylor establish a new image for the band as fashionable counterculture icons, and so a promotional campaign with the tagline "Brian Wilson is a genius" was created and coordinated by Taylor. Wilson told Melody Maker: "Our new album will be better than Pet Sounds. It will be as much an improvement over Sounds as that was over [our 1965 album] Summer Days."
  Throughout the summer of 1966, Wilson concentrated on finishing the group's forthcoming single, "Good Vibrations".  According to various reports, both the Pet Sounds and "Good Vibrations" recording sessions were fraught with tension between the group members. Wilson's bandmates resented that he was singled out as a "genius", while he believed that they were worried about him separating from the group. He recalled that the band "liked Pet Sounds but they said it was too arty", and that they eventually "gave in [and] let me have my little stint". In 1976, he said that some group members were frustrated with the lengthy recording devoted to "Good Vibrations", but declined to name who specifically. Derek Taylor could not recall hearing "a single disparaging word [about Brian from the other Beach Boys] in all that time. Maybe a few jokes about his eccentricities, but always basically affectionate." Anderle said the first problems with Brian's bandmates were when they voiced concerns about losing "what the Beach Boys are" by going too "far out" beyond a "simple dumb thing", and that they did not want to change their "physical image" (i.e. their striped shirts and white pants stage uniforms).
  Released on October 10, 1966, "Good Vibrations" was the Beach Boys' third US number-one hit, reaching the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in December, and became their first number one in Britain. That month, the record was their first single certified gold by the RIAA. The Beach Boys were soon voted the number-one band in the world in an annual readers' poll conducted by NME, ahead of the Beatles, the Walker Brothers, the Rolling Stones, and the Four Tops.  Biographer David Leaf wrote that the success of "Good Vibrations" "bought Brian some time [and] shut up everybody who said that Brian's new ways wouldn't sell...his inability to quickly follow up 'Good Vibrations' [was what] became a snowballing problem."
  By December 1966, Wilson had completed much of the Smile backing tracks. When the Beach Boys returned from a month-long tour of Europe, they were confused by the new music he had recorded and the new coterie of interlopers that surrounded him. Gaines wrote that David Anderle now appeared to them as the leader of "a whole group of strangers [that] had infiltrated and taken over the Beach Boys". Anderle had been encouraging Wilson to leave the group, and he was "sure they saw me as somebody ... who was fueling Brian's weirdness. And I stand guilty on those counts."
caption: The group (without Johnston) at Zuma Beach in Malibu, July 1967
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