It’s Good-Vibrations Time for Patient Fans

For Brian Wilson and Patti Smith fans, the wait is almost over.

Wilson and Smith, two landmark names from radically different eras in rock music, are again making music after lengthy exiles.

Wilson, the architect of the Beach Boys’ classic ‘60s salutes to teen exuberance (and, occasionally, doubts ), on Tuesday will release a single, “Love and Mercy,” from his first-ever solo album.

The LP, titled “Brian Wilson” and due July 12 on Sire Records, is easily Wilson’s most exhilarating piece of work in more than two decades. The album also represents the most dramatic return to artistic excellence since John Fogerty resumed his place in “Centerfield” in 1985.

Smith, whose boldness and originality in the late-’70s punk/new wave scene demonstrated to a whole new generation of women that there was a place for them in what had been a man’s-only world of rock, has already released a new single, “People Have the Power,” on Arista Records. Her first album in nine years is also due July 12.

In the album, “Dreams of Life,” Smith sets aside some of her early abandon for gentler and more reflective tones, but the move is not at the sacrifice of her poetic imagination. There is a soft but seductive tension in the new material that grows out of frequently powerful musical arrangements and more understated philosophical themes.

Despite the two artists’ different images and styles, their singles, interestingly, are both endearing, socially conscious messages of optimism and hope. Well, at least guarded optimism and hope.

Because of highly publicized personal problems--many of them traced to drug use-- Wilson, 46, has faded in and out of the pop scene since his glory days in the early and mid-’60s, when sunny songs such as “Good Vibrations” and “California Girls” made the Beach Boys the most popular rock band in the world.

But there was also a darker, more poignant strain in the Beach Boys’ early work that hinted at some of the personal trials in Wilson’s life. His weight by the early ‘80s was more than 300 pounds and Beach Boys manager Tom Hulett worried aloud about Wilson being the “next headline (fatality) in Billboard.”

That’s when Wilson turned to Eugene Landy, a controversial psychologist who pioneered an unusual “24-hour therapy” approach that moves beyond the traditional office setting to round-the-clock contact with patients in their own environments.

Landy was recently charged by the California Board of Medical Quality Assurance with ethical and licensing code violations. Among the board’s concerns is Landy’s dual role with Wilson as a psychologist and business associate. He co-wrote five of the songs on the new album and is listed as executive producer.

Wilson had made enough progress by 1983 that he regained his health (he was down to under 200 pounds) and in interviews talked about making a solo record. But progress was slow until Wilson attended the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame dinner two years ago in New York.

Seymour Stein, head of Sire Records, talked with Wilson at the dinner and said he’d love him to release his album on Sire. That encouragement, Wilson said in a recent interview, was the final catalyst. “It was the starting point,” he said flatly after previewing an early version of the album in a Santa Monica recording studio.

The new single, co-written by Wilson and Landy, combines the classic Beach Boys harmony and musical expanse with a sweet, innocent tale of yearning for a world free of violence and suffering. The flip-side, “He Couldn’t Get His Poor Old Body to Move,” is a good-natured fitness anthem, growing out of Wilson’s own campaign to get his bloated body back into shape.

Did Wilson ever lose faith in his ability to make music again?

“Sure,” he said, forcefully. “I thought it was gone forever. . . . But there’s something I learned off a billboard one time on Sunset Boulevard. It said, ‘All Things Must Pass,’ and that’s what I kept telling myself. . . . (I kept thinking) I’ll eventually get it back.”

Unlike Wilson, Smith, an artist and poet before entering the rock field, took a voluntary break from the pop scene.

Smith, whose “Horses” and “Easter” albums were two of the most commanding rock collections of the ‘70s, was enjoying both critical and commercial success (“Because the Night” was a Top 20 hit) in 1979 when she surprised the pop world by giving up her music career.

Smith married Fred Smith, a founding member of the rock band MC5, and moved to Detroit, where the couple had two children. It was the most dramatic reversal of career momentum since John Lennon began his “house-husband” period in 1976.

Smith, 41, explained recently in Interview magazine that her priorities simply changed--that she had lost her thirst for performing and wanted to get new perspectives.

“There was a time in my (professional) life when I was completely involved in what I was doing. . . . ,” she said in the interview. “Once I had known that feeling, I couldn’t really settle for anything less. . . . It really wasn’t difficult at all to stop. . . . It gave me a chance to develop as a person.”

The new single, co-written by Fred Smith, is a rallying cry for social unity, and it contrasts with the rebel, outcast feeling of much of her ‘70s work. But the record has ties to the earlier period. It was co-produced by Jimmy Iovine, who produced the “Easter” album, and it features two members of her old band: drummer Jay Dee Daugherty and keyboardist Richard Sohl.

About the new attitude, she said, “The most valuable thing about having any type of fame, or power, is how you use it to help your fellow man or (to) make people aware of certain things. . . .

“One thing that I was well aware of when I stopped in 1979, was that I wasn’t using my position in a worthwhile way. When you spend all your time worrying about sound systems, you cease being involved in the positive sides of your power.”

LIVE ACTION: Tickets go on sale Sunday for Billy Ocean’s Aug. 19-21 engagement at the Universal Amphitheatre, and for Bruce Hornsby’s Aug. 20 and 21 dates at Pacific Amphitheatre. . . . Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Charley Pride and Eddie Rabbitt are among the performers set for a rock and country festival Aug. 13 and 14 at the Long Beach Naval Hospital Sports Field. . . . Second shows have been added to the local engagements of Rod Stewart (Aug. 10 at the Forum) and 10,000 Maniacs (July 19 at the Wiltern). . . . Exene Cervenka, Johnette Nopalitano and Victoria Williams play McCabe’s on July 15.