COULD on that point be a more daunting musical task than the one Brian Wilson took on basketball team years ago when he decided to resurrect his storied masterwork �Smile,� the long-abandoned Beach Boys project that had plunged him into an abyss of psychological torment?
Well, how around completing "Smile" to far-flung acclaim, only to find himself face to face with peradventure an even more intimidating challenge: "What next?"
Wilson's answer arrives Tuesday with �That Lucky Old Sun,� the next step in the unlikely bring back of the musician whose life virtually created the blueprint for the rock-and-roll 'n' roll out prodigy seed flameout.
The new album is some other song bicycle, a loosely thematic solve that examines and revels in life in Southern California. It celebrates a culture that Wilson helped define in the sixties with his ebullient songs of surfboarder girls, sandlike beaches and endless honorable vibrations.
"Smile" was perhaps the most ardently debated "lost" album in pop music history before Wilson revived it; by comparison, "That Lucky Old Sun" arrives with no history and infinitely fewer expectations. That made it more playfulness to create for the 66-year-old sole surviving Wilson brother -- Dennis, the band's honest beach boy, drowned in 1983. Sweet-voiced Carl died in 1998 of cancer.
"This is more of a pop album than 'Smile' was," says Wilson, striding the perimeter of a neighborhood park in L.A. He launches an impromptu a cappella rendering of the album's "Morning Beat":
The sun robert Burns a hole through the 6 a.m. haze
Turns up the volume and shows off its rays
Another Dodger puritanical sky is crowning L.A.
The City of Angels is blessed every day
"That's a good stone 'n' roll song!" he proclaims. "I don't bonk how advantageously it will sell, just I hope people will like it."
After completing deuce-ace miles around the park -- he'd already logged two that morning -- he steps back into his gaudy 2006 Mercedes coupe and tools up the steeply winding roadstead leading to his ducky deli, not far from the brow home where he and his wife, Melinda, have lived for 13 years.
He snaps on the car radio sporadically, usually for just a second or two, long enough for him to identify whatsoever song is playing. It's tuned to oldies station KRTH-FM (one hundred one.1), and when Stevie Wonder's "If You Really Love Me" bursts from the speakers, he keeps it on. Then, serendipitously, comes the first strain Brian Wilson ever wrote, "Surfer Girl." He listens but doesn't utter a word.
Does he know how much his music has meant to so many people over the years?
"Not really," he says matter-of-factly. "I'm non sure what it way. I would imagine they think some of it's pretty good."
Pulling up in front of the food shop, he rosa Parks and greets the store's manager. It's obvious he's a regular. He snags a table, exchanges a handshake and a warm hello with a notable neighbor in the next booth. A few transactions later, the celebrity heads to the door. Wilson shouts, "Hi, handsome!" as the piece smiles courteously and exits.
A couple of beats later on the door swings closed, Wilson asks: "What was the call of that guy, that actor?"
Warren Beatty.
"He's a better-looking fellow," Wilson says.
You never know what clicks with Wilson. It might take him a minute to place the face of one of the world's most recognizable movie stars, but anything musical is always at his fingertips. And when it comes to music, his head is tuned to its own frequency.
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