Brian Wilson and the Legend of Smile

BY THE TIME ‘Good Vibrations’ had hit No.1 at the end of 1966, Brian was firmly committed to extending pop's boundaries as far as he could. Gathering around him a coterie of brilliant, precocious scene-makers–Van Dyke Parks, Loren Schwartz, Danny Hutton, David Anderle, writers Jules Siegel and Paul Jay Robbins–he dug in deep and all but kissed goodbye to the Beach Boys of old. Most important among these men was Parks, the diminutive, bespectacled keyboard player whom he'd first met at Terry Melcher’s house on Cielo Drive in February 1966.