Beach Boys to Officially Release Long-Incomplete Album 'Smile' This Year
Recordings will be sold as double CD and box set
By Matthew Perpetua
March 11, 2011 11:50 AM ET
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/beach-boys-to-officially-release-long-incomplete-album-smile-this-year-20110311Capitol Records have announced that they will be releasing the Beach Boys' lost, incomplete album Smile later this year. Smile was originally planned as the follow-up to the band's 1966 classic Pet Sounds, but the material was mostly abandoned due to creative mastermind Brian Wilson's fragile mental health at the time.
Though no release date has been set, the official release of Smile will be sold as a two-CD set and as a deluxe box set including four CDs, two vinyl LPs, two vinyl singles and a 60-page hardbound book penned by Beach Boys historian Domenic Priore. The final track listing has not been announced, but disc one of the CD set and the first three sides of the vinyl edition will contain a close approximation of the Smile album, with the remainder collecting outtakes and alternate versions from the sessions.
The Smile sessions have been widely bootlegged among fans for decades, but the proper track listing for the album has never been established, largely due to the fact that the record was never completed as intended. According to engineer Mark Linett, Brian Wilson's 2004 version of Smile has been used as the template for this project, though it could turn out a bit different depending on input from Wilson and the surviving members of the group.