It’s the most famous unreleased album in history – the Beach Boys’ SMiLE was supposed to come out way back in 1967, but the project fell apart amidst a cloud of drugs and self-doubt by leader Brian Wilson. Now, some 45 years later, those legendary tapes are finally seeing the light of day in the SMiLE Sessions, a five-CD boxset containing, for the first time, an estimation of the “finished” would-be album, plus several discs of session highlights, alternate takes, and demos. Mark Linett, who co-produced the monumental project along with Alan Boyd and Wilson, sits down with Icon Fetch to discuss the unique difficulties in putting this set together, how they settled on five CDs for the deluxe edition, and how this compares to the critically-acclaimed Pet Sounds Sessions box.
