Phases & Stages

Wouldn't it be nice if Mike Love had just shut up and let Brian Wilson Smile? David Leaf's Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson & the Story of Smile doesn't dwell on its "Heroes and Villains" particularly, thanks to the documentarians being front and center for the four-decade drama's happy ending. Sunk in the wake of the Beach Boys' miraculous Pet Sounds (1966), Smile proved itself Wilson's personal and professional crucible when the lapsed genius resurrected it in 2001 and nearly lost his marbles all over again. Sadly, instead of the LP's Royal Albert Hall unveiling, disc two of Brian Wilson Presents Smile (Rhino) brings the fabled pocket opera to life in an undated, undisclosed L.A. performance, whose impeccable regeneration suffers from a zooming, claustrophobic shoot. By then, however, Smile was a grand success. "I felt healed," exclaims Wilson. Austinite Bradley Beesley's Flaming Lips time capsule, The Fearless Freaks (Shout Factory), also excises demons, the Okies' archivist of 15 years shucking 400 hours of revelatory footage into a gripping tale of familial dysfunction and unlikely commercial ascension, led by master of ceremony Wayne Coyne's boundless faith and vision. The commentary track with Beesley and the band is almost as vibrant as the film itself. A bonus DVD with more than an hour of outtakes and live footage features the Lips backstage at Austin City Limits. There's a sole extra on the initial Sex Pistols documentary, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (Shout Factory), but then director Julian Temple's feature length commentary/interview with Chris Salewicz could be its own exposé. Before Temple went back in 2000 and filled in all the blanks with The Filth and the Fury, this 1980 "polemic about the politics of entertainment" was the "Citizen Kane of rock movies," a punk aspiration to the art house pretension of Jean-Luc Godard (Sympathy for the Devil). Fortunately, the Pistols' "incandescent" reality prevailed. "There's blood all over the walls," acknowledges Temple, "but in a way, that had to be."