Grammys Could Put a Smile on Brian Wilson’s Face
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Wouldn’t it be nice if Brian Wilson finally won a Grammy?
The former Beach Boy will compete for two of the music industry’s most coveted awards on Sunday, hoping to end one of the most infamous losing streaks in the event’s 47-year history.
Along with influential rock acts such as the Who and Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Beach Boys — in which Wilson was the main creative force — never won a Grammy. Their 1960s peers the Rolling Stones had to wait until 1995 for their first statuette.
The Grammys largely ignored the nascent rock revolution, preferring to reward acts like Frank Sinatra and the 5th Dimension.
Wilson, 62, bears no grudges.
“I just don’t think the Beach Boys were that impressive of a vocal group to be nominated. They were a good group, but they weren’t great,” he told Reuters in a recent interview.
“I thought maybe I should have been nominated a little bit more as a songwriter, but I wasn’t.”
The Beach Boys did receive a nomination in 1966 for their No. 1 single “Good Vibrations,” a tune many consider to be Wilson’s crowning glory. But along with such worthy contenders as the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” and the Mamas and the Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” it lost the contemporary rock Grammy award to the novelty song “Winchester Cathedral.”
WILSON’S “SMILE”
This year, Wilson has been nominated for “Brian Wilson Presents Smile,” a re-recording of a 1966 Beach Boys album that was never finished. At the time, Wilson envisaged “Smile” as a “teenage symphony to God,” but he abandoned it as his drug abuse played havoc with his mental state.
Tunes from “Smile,” such as “Heroes and Villains” and “Surf’s Up” turned up on later albums, and “Smile” took on a mythical status as one of rock’s great lost works.
In 2003, Wilson and “Smile” lyricist Van Dyke Parks finally completed the project. Wilson and his band played “Smile” in its entirety for the first time last February in England.
Back in Los Angeles, he recorded the basic tracks for the album over five days in April. Released in October by the boutique Nonesuch Records label, “Brian Wilson Presents Smile” debuted at No. 13 on the U.S. pop charts and has sold more than 300,000 units, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
The album yielded Grammy nominations for pop vocal album and pop instrumental (“Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow”), as well as best-engineered album (non-classical), an award that would go to Mark Linett.
Wilson said he was most confident of winning the pop vocal album award, although one of his rivals is seven-time nominee Ray Charles, who is considered a sentimental favorite.
The 47th annual Grammy Awards will take place at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The main televised event begins at 8 p.m. EST (0100 GMT Monday), but most of the winners in the 107 categories will be announced immediately beforehand.
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