AVC: How does the music sound different to you now, versus when you started working on it?
BW: It sounds happier, more jovial. Jovial and happier.
AVC: Did you think of it as being dark at the time?
BW: No, no.
AVC: The documentary works a lot to place you in a line behind George Gershwin and Cole Porter and Rodgers & Hammerstein.
BW: And Bach. Smile is inspired by Bach and Gershwin. [Sings melody.] That's Bach. We stole from Bach.
AVC: During the '60s, did you feel like The Beach Boys were part of the rock counterculture?
BW: Well, The Beach Boys have always been a part of the '60s spectrum, with The Beatles and that kind of thing. They were a part of the music business like everyone else. And they did quite well as a singing group, and I finished a lot of good records, and I'm very proud of them.
AVC: How would you describe the relationship that you had with The Beatles at the time?
BW: It was a friendly rivalry, as I call it. It was a mutual inspiration trip.
AVC: Did you guys talk about it at the time, or was it unspoken?
BW: It was an unspoken thing. In terms of 2004, they cried when they came back after the concert at the Royal Festival Hall. Paul McCartney came backstage crying. He cried his eyes out.
AVC: Do you feel like you outdid The Beatles in any way?
BW: Outdid? No! There's no outdoing The Beatles. You can do something that makes them say, "Hey, The Beach Boys must really like us, or they wouldn't have made that kind of music." So Paul McCartney is probably in love with me. [Laughs.]
AVC: Considering how clean-cut The Beach Boys originally were, was there tension between the group's past and what it later became?
BW: Well, we started out with surf songs, and then car songs, and then Pet Sounds, which was a little bit of a departure from the others. And then finally we got into, like, Carl And The Passions: So Tough. I don't know if you've ever heard of that album. We started making a little heavier music than we did before. We had our surf songs, which were rinky-dink. Our ballads, which were very beautiful. And we had our rock 'n' roll album.
AVC: Does Smile sound like a '60s album to you now?
BW: No. It sounds like a 2004 album.
AVC: What were you trying to do differently with Smile that you didn't do with Pet Sounds?
BW: I said, "I want something not so emotionally drained." After you hear Pet Sounds, you're emotionally drained. I wanted to have people leave on a kind of good, jovial high with Smile. I wanted Smile to make people a little happier and a little more up by the time the album was over, so they would walk away and say, "Hey, I like that album," instead of going, "Wow, what an emotional drain that was." That was my mood.
AVC: Do you think Smile is better than Pet Sounds?
BW: I like it better. I don't know if it's better, but I like it better, personally, than the others.
AVC: How come?
BW: Because it has happier and more jovial songs in it. And it moves fast—some of the pieces are only five seconds. Some of them are 30, 45 seconds, some are two minutes, three minutes, some are like 15 seconds, you know? It's like a very, very, very, very well-put-together sequence of music.
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