u/taterwilliam

If we get Smile, then we don't get Smiley Smile, which has the spookier, more avant garde, arguably more interesting versions of those songs. Not to mention the homespun Wild Honey - Friends - 20/20 trajectory of the next couple years.

The irony of Brian ditching Smile because the boys thought it was too "out there," to go make an even weirder version of the album... and the rest of the guys (including Mike!) are totally on board and sound like they're having the time of their lives. Welcome to the Beach Boys circus.

I love Brian's wilderness years. Some of my favourite anecdotes from an article in The Atlantic, 1991:

Wilson, who, in addition to smoking five or six packs of Marlboros a day, was “consuming unthinkable quantities of junk food, booze, and cocaine,” not to mention untold cups of “megacoffee,” each made with as many as six spoonfuls of instant-coffee crystals and “sugar—lots of it.” 

Carolyn Williams, ostensibly his nurse but “more like a wife or girlfriend," kept Wilson supplied with “food and booze” but “otherwise left me alone.” Indeed, he writes, she left him alone to the point of not bothering to phone for help when he passed out on the floor after inhaling four full grams of cocaine. When he came to, the next morning, she blithely asked Wilson to call his accountant to ask for money.