DEC4 Podcast (New Episode): David Leaf - The Rise, Fall & Resurrection of Brian Wilson
Features Gary Wells
This episode, we’re enormously privileged to welcome award winning filmmaker and author, David Leaf, to discuss his latest book, SMiLE: The Rise, Fall & Resurrection of Brian Wilson. This celebratory work takes us to the very heart of Brian Wilson’s lost musical masterpiece; its traumatic unravelling in 1967, and the road to a triumphant rebirth in 2004 as an ecstatically received live concert experience and studio album.
David affords us some fascinating, behind the scenes insights into his 2001 television special recorded at Radio City Music Hall, An All-Star Tribute to Brian Wilson, his Grammy-nominated documentary, Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of SMiLE, and talks candidly about some of the life experiences that shaped Brian’s exquisite artistry.
Brian Wilson’s epic journey through the music of SMiLE is a dramatic and inspirational story, and we’re so lucky to learn about it from someone with such a uniquely close and personal perspective, who was critical to bringing SMiLE back to life, and to whom Brian Wilson himself said, ‘I can’t do this unless you’re there with me every day’.
(Post edit: We note with sadness Brian’s passing, (announced) June 11, 2025, aged 82.)
According to Brian Wilson’s official website, SMiLE was planned to follow The Beach Boys’ 11th studio album, Pet Sounds, and was to be;
“…A twelve-track concept LP assembled from short, interchangeable musical fragments similar to the group’s 1966 single ‘Good Vibrations’. SMiLE was planned to feature word paintings, tape manipulation, elaborate vocal arrangements, experiments with musical acoustics, and comedic interludes, with influences drawn from psychedelia, pre-rock and roll pop, doo-wop, jazz, ragtime, musique concrète, classical, American history, poetry, cartoons, and mysticism...”
The ambitious and highly anticipated project was abandoned in 1967, amid conflicts within The Beach Boys and with Capitol, their record company (with whom litigation was in process), over creative differences, commercial potential, and Brian Wilson’s own mental health crisis.
“I was able to get hold of all these drugs,” Brian Wilson told interviewer Bob Harris in a segment featuring in the 1985 Malcolm Leo documentary The Beach Boys: An American Band, “And they messed me up, they messed my mind up.” Of LSD, Brian said, “It just totally tore my head off.” In separate comments also featured in American Band, Brian said, “I stayed in my room for about three and a half years, I was taking some drugs, you know, and I experimented, and I experimented myself right out of action.”
Brian Wilson has always been breathtakingly honest and open about his drug use, as is David Leaf during our podcast, explaining that Brian was ‘not a person of limits, in terms of his music, his eating, or his drug intake’.
As to the exact role of drugs in the demise of the original SMiLE; like just about everything else, there are conflicting opinions.
Beach Boys mythology suggests Mike Love was the principal, or perhaps only, voice of protest from within the band itself, but the reasons behind the shelving of SMiLE were far more complex. David writes in SMiLE: The Rise, Fall & Resurrection of Brian Wilson, that, ‘Trying to understand what ended the project is like trying to survive in a circular firing squad’.

David quotes Brian’s friend and collaborating lyricist, Van Dyke Parks;
“…I think that Mike Love is the most famous instrument of restraint in the situation to the point that he defeated the process, but he didn’t do it maliciously . . . he couldn’t understand what it was all about. And ultimately, I got to the point where I couldn’t understand what it was all about…”
David explains in detail how, around the time of his 2001 television programme, An All-Star Tribute to Brian Wilson, Brian began to come to terms with the residual trauma lingering from the original sessions and, with support, gradually got to work on completing and presenting the music in sequence as originally intended. A key moment on the journey was during a Christmas party at the home of Brian’s band member, Scott Bennett;
“…In December of 2000 just three months before the tribute, Brian was sitting on the piano bench with his back to the piano, next to my late wife, Eva…and he said to her, What do you want for Christmas? She said for you to play Heroes and Villains, and he said, okay. And he turned around and started playing Heroes and Villains, and it was just staggering, it was just stunning, people came running in from other rooms of Scott’s house to hear what was going on, because up until that moment, if anybody in Brian’s band had mentioned Heroes and Villains, or SMiLE, or any of the songs from SMiLE, he would say, I don’t want to talk about it, it’s inappropriate music, it reminds me of a really bad time in my life. When he finished playing it that night, I said to him, you know, Brian, you really ought to do that at the tribute and he said, okay…”
David goes into much more detail about the leadup to the 2004 London premiere of Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE during the podcast, and we also have more at this episode’s dedicated webpage. We also link to David Leaf’s official site which in turn links to recommended Brian Wilson related media, and there is also a detailed rundown of David’s own remarkable career.


A theme running through the reemergence of Brian Wilson as a touring and recording artist, and his ability to finally come to grips with the residual pain and trauma of the original SMiLE sessions, is ‘emotional security’.
David Leaf tells us;
“…Melinda brought a stability to him that he characterised as emotional security. When he said that in an interview in 1995, I was standing to the side while the interview was taking place, and it just reminds me of just how much he can say in so few words. This guy contains multitudes, and he lets it out in four word bursts…Was he cured? No. Was he treated with kindness? Yes. And that was what Melinda brought to his life…”

David Leaf writes;
“…Looking back at all that transpired – and listening to the music in 2024 – here’s my two cents: It’s inconceivable that the indescribably beautiful and otherworldly melodies and ethereal, magical harmonies of Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE came from one very special mind – Brian Wilson’s. Given all the songs and lyrics and pieces that were written in 1966-67, and the new material Brian, Van Dyke, and Darian worked on in 2003, it must be noted that the way it was assembled into a three-movement rock opera was absolutely brilliant. I’m so proud that I had a small role in making it happen. Greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life...”
SMiLE: The Rise, Fall & Resurrection of Brian Wilson is published by Omnibus Press.
Playlist (Official YouTube): Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE
Very special thanks to David Leaf, to Gary Wells, all our readers and listeners, to Detlef Wolff and Gainesville, and to Steve Collins.