In 1966, Brian Wilson planned to follow up the Beach Boys' groundbreaking album Pet Sounds with an even bigger musical statement. He was writing a teenage symphony to God. That album, Smile, was never finished. Instead, Brian slowly unraveled, as the pressure to make something profound weighed heavy on him. He worried that he wasn’t good enough. He worried that he was a failure in the eyes of the record company, his band, his peers, and his own father. He thought his house was bugged. He thought the music he was making conjured some strange voodoo that had a disastrous impa...