Beach boys leader Brian Wilson abandoned his ambitious follow-up to Pet Sounds. This new book seeks to understand why.

Long-serving Wilson friend and biographer David Leaf goes deep on the four decade long story of The Beach Boys’ lost 1967 opus, SMiLE.

A week after the Disney album, on Nov. 1, Capitol/EMI releases “The SMiLE Sessions,” a two-disc set of tracks recorded by the Beach Boys during 1966-67 for the famous “lost” album that ...