Each week, SPIN will dig into the catalog of great artists and highlight songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series.
When Brian Wilson passed away earlier this month, the brilliant Beach Boys songwriter-producer left behind a catalog of timeless hits like “I Get Around” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”
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Arguably the most famous Beach Boys album, though, is the one that technically doesn’t exist.
In late 1966 and early 1967, Wilson ran himself ragged working on SMiLE, ultimately shelving the unfinished follow-up to Pet Sounds.
The legend of SMiLE grew as songs Wilson had written for the album trickled out on bootlegs and Beach Boys albums like 1967’s Smiley Smile and 1971’s Surf’s Up. “Wind Chimes” was one of the first songs Wilson wrote for SMiLE with Van Dyke Parks, a brilliant young musician from Mississippi who’d just released a solo single on MGM Records. For decades, the only commercially available version of “Wind Chimes” was on Smiley Smile, a minimal and almost unsettling arrangement recorded in Wilson’s home studio with little more than organ, piano, and the Beach Boys’ gorgeous vocal harmonies. It’s good, but not great.
The original 1966 version of “Wind Chimes,” recorded at Gold Star Studios with Carl Wilson on lead vocals, is an absolute revelation. That arrangement, first released on the 1993 box set Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of the Beach Boys, opens with a gorgeous bed of marimba and upright bass. Then the track explodes with the full force of the Wrecking Crew’s legendary session musicians, with Hal Blaine’s thunderous drums and Al De Lory’s harpsichord dominating the mix.
In 2004, Wilson re-recorded “Wind Chimes” for Brian Wilson Presents Smile, working with Parks and keyboardist Darian Sahanaja to recapture and complete his original 1966 vision of the album. Though Wilson’s voice has been weathered by time, it’s otherwise fairly true to the Gold Star version.
In 2011, the original SMiLE tapes were mixed down for the closest thing to a definitive version of the album, The Smile Sessions. That version of “Wind Chimes” is clearer, brighter, and about 30 seconds longer than most of the previous versions. And it only took 45 years for us to hear it the way Brian Wilson first envisioned it.
Three more essential Beach Boys deep cuts:
“No-Go Showboat”
At a time when most of the Beach Boys’ songs were about surfing, 1963’s Little Deuce Coupe was considered one of rock’s concept albums as the band pivoted to songs about cars.
“I Know There’s an Answer”
One of the Pet Sounds songs most famously influenced by Wilson’s heavy LSD use was called “Hang On to Your Ego” before the lyrics were revised at Mike Love’s behest. Frank Black of the Pixies covered the song, with its original title and lyrics, on his 1993 solo debut.
“All I Wanna Do”
With its heavily reverbed guitars and Moog synths, this once-obscure track from 1970’s Sunflower has become famous for how closely it resembles the chillwave aesthetic of 2010s indie bands.
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