Wasn’t ‘Smile’ the album Brian Wilson (basically) threw in the trash before it was done after he listened to ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band?
Brian was under pressure to top both Pet Sounds an Sgt Pepper. He went into the studio, recorded a plethora of snippets and brief demo tracks. This was the way that he had taken to working; pulling everything together at the end in massive editing sessions.
Unfortunately, he found it harder and harder to put anything coherent together out of his growing pile of bits and pieces. Deadlines came and went; public announcements had been made; record covers had been printed; and yet, it all came to naught.
It was the occasion of Brian's further retreat into his own world for several years.
People would subsequently unearth master tapes, or Nth generation or cassette copies of them, and piece together from the available materials what they thought the album might have been intended to be. Several of these were sold as bootlegs.
Meanwhile, a number of pieces that had been intended for Smile did come out as singles or tracks on subsequent official albums. The most significant of these were Heroes And Villains and Surf's Up, both with lyricist VanDyke Parks.
Years later, Brian himself didn't know exactly what he had in mind for the album back in '67. His recent "re"make represents the closest approach we will ever have.