Q: So when the musicians are so excited and then the Beach Boys don’t like it, did that hurt your feelings?

A: It hurt my feelings a little bit, but I got over it.

Q: AI’m glad. Now, around this time, you kind of felt like you were in a race, right, because --

A: Right.

Q: -- what you were doing was so new. And you heard Strawberry Fields on the radio at some point?

A: Right.

Q: -- I was watching the documentary. You were at a party and suddenly, they said, you started playing Heroes and Villains.

A: I heard it and I flipped. I loved it.

Q: And did you feel like that was sort of the direction you were going in and now everyone was hearing --

A: Not really. No, not really the direction, no.

Q: You just liked it as a song?

A: Yeah, I liked it.

Q: Do you think that the world would have reacted as positively to Smile, if it came out back in the ‘60s?

A: No, the world wouldn’t have been ready for it. People wouldn’t have been ready.

Q: But they were ready for Sgt. Pepper’s.

A: Yeah, but Smile was so advanced. It really was. It was segments. Smile is a collection of segments of music. And people weren’t ready to hear one segment real fast through another segment.

Q: Is that what they mean when they talk about modular recording, segments put together, I guess?

A: Yeah. Modular recording, right. We used computers and Pro Tools to sequence it.

Q: So there’s some things you might not have even been able to do back then that you did --

A: Oh, absolutely, yeah. Yeah

Q: So all in all, this is -- what seemed to be a bummer at the time, turned out to be this gigantic blessing?

A: Yeah. Actually, you’re right. That is true. It did turn out to be a blessing, because we finished it in the studio.

Q: And you didn’t consider using any of the original recordings from the ‘60s, did you?

A: We didn’t use them. We just learned them from the ‘60s, the tapes. We took the tapes and learned the songs -- relearned them. And then we recorded from scratch. We didn’t use any of the original tapes.

Q: And who’s your band member, Darian? He helped you --

A: He helped me sequence it, yeah, with computers and Pro Tools. He was the one that helped me.

Q: Because when you have all these segments, putting them in order, that’s got to be a big task.

A: It was a -- it was a rough job, but we got it done. It was really rough.

Q: The album is so amazing. It’s called Smile. Wind Chimes, that you wrote with Van Dyke. Can you tell me something about it?

A: Wind Chimes was supposed to be -- give you peace of mind to hear. Supposed to give people a little peace of mind.

Q: We were just saying what a blessing it was, ultimately, that Smile was not released in the ‘60s when Brian was working on it, because he felt the world wasn’t ready for the album. And also, it’s been received so well now in its new recording. Do you remember when the decision was made that Smile was not going to come out in the ‘60s?

A: Yeah. Van Dyke and I made the decision in 1967, when we were working on it, not to finish it, because we were too far ahead of our time.

Q: But some of the songs did come out shortly thereafter on albums like Smiley Smile, which was pretty --

A: Right. Good Vibrations came out on Smiley Smile, yeah.

Q: And on 20/20, did something come out? I’m trying to remember.

A: Cabinessence, I think.

Q: Cabinessence, yeah.

A: Yeah, right.

Q: But you felt like it was okay to give some of the songs out, but the work as a whole --

A: Right

Q: -- people couldn’t hang with it?

A: No, people wouldn’t have been able to hang with it (laughs).

Q: So may people mention drugs as a reason for the emotional turmoil that you were going through and the abandonment of the project. Do you agree with that?

A: Yeah, drugs kind of messed with my mind a little bit, kind of messed me up.

Q: But the Beach Boys, not embracing the record seems to me like as big of a reason as any, really.

A: Well, yeah. I can agree with that (laughs). I agree with that.

Q: I was watching in the documentary, there is a part where you’re singing Surf’s Up on a Leonard Bernstein television program.

A: Right. He told me that -- he said, “Brian, this is one of the greatest songs I’ve ever heard.” He told me personally that.

Q: And did you ever consider -- I mean, why couldn’t you have put out Smile as a solo project? Caroline No came out with your name on it at one point.

A: Yeah. We just decided not to do it.

Q: Yeah. And that’s obviously your choice. And as we said, it ultimately was a blessing the way things turned out.

A: Right.

Q: The new Smile, the Smile that just come out -- the first Smile that most people heard, you and Van Dyke wrote a whole other suite for it?

A: We wrote a third movement for it, all about Hawaii and paradise and being in paradise. Yeah, we did that together in 2004, actually, yeah.

Q: And even before you and Van Dyke made this record together, you took Smile to the stage in England?

A: We premiered it in London. And we got standing ovations six nights in a row.

Q: Wow. When you first got there, though, you were pretty nervous about it all, weren’t you?

A: Oh, I was very nervous, yeah. I was very, very nervous before we went on.

Q: But then I saw at the premiere, people like George Martin and Paul McCartney and Van Dyke were all there. And the audience was in tears and people, as you said, standing ovations.

A: Yeah, it was quite the night. It was quite a night.

Q: Is that when you decided maybe we should make this record?

A: Yes. We decided to record it after that.

Q: We mentioned Darian, who was your secretary -- musical secretary, helped you with the sequencing and stuff. Were you going back and listening to those original tapes and did you have --

A: Darian and I went back and listened to them, yeah. We listened to them. We learned them and then we took them from scratch in the studio.

Q: Were there lyric sheets, as well?

A: Lyric sheets?

Q: Yeah. Van Dyke’s words, were they written down somewhere?

A: Yeah. Yeah.

Q: Because I think I remember the story that that’s when you called Van Dyke up, because you couldn’t make out a word or something on the paper?

A: Right (laughs).

Q: You say, “Hi, this is Brian Wilson. I know we haven’t spoken in a few years” --

A: I said, “I can’t understand what this paper is.”

Q: What did he say?

A: He goes, “I’m sorry, Brian, I didn’t mean to confuse you.”

Q: And did he say, “I’ll come over and help you, if you like”?

A: He told me that he would, yeah. And he did. He came over.