Six psychedelic rock albums that deserve more love

The Beach Boys - Smile Sessions

The Beach Boys’ original Smile album, which was never released as such, is possibly one of the biggest legends circulated within rock music. Appearing in snippets of official singles, some of which, like ‘Good Vibrations’ and ‘Heroes and Villains’ rank as among the best ever released by any standard, or on later Beach Boys albums it became a subject of fan fantasy that produced scores of self-made bootlegs.

All of this is followed with stories of curious instances and scenes during the recording sessions, the fact that nobody knew the final song order, or whether all the recorded tapes were ever recovered with the allegations that some of them were either lost or burned.

The fan craving and imagination weren’t subsided either by its official substitute Smiley Smile (albeit a great, but also much-maligned album), or by decades later reconstruction and re-recording by the album’s original mastermind Brian Wilson.

After decades and squabbling between Wilson and Mike Love, whatever was recovered from the original sessions was finally released as either a 2 or 5 CD set back in 2011 presenting an excellent ‘what if’ opportunity for everybody, without actually getting the full attention it really deserved.