Good points, Jdman. Apart from Good Vibrations and Heroes & Villains, I don't hear anything on Smile that DJs would have played, or that would have drawn the record-buying public away from the likes of Sgt. Pepper or albums by the Doors, the Stones, or the Turtles. It was just too much of a departure from the mainstream. I still like Smile, but I think there's a good chance it would have ended up like Pop Symphony did had Brian finished it.
Perhaps a small part of the reason for Jan & Dean's waning chart performance in '65-'66 is the fact that they were with Liberty, who had a rough time competing with more powerful labels like Capitol--Liberty didn't seem to have as much money or the talented people to devote to promoting their artists. I think this may have compounded Jan & Dean's problems after the decline of surf/hot rod music around 1965. But I think it's true that the material Jan & Dean were turning out during this period, good and well-produced though it was, just didn't appeal to the public as much as what they'd done in '63-'64.
Although I think Pop Symphony is a brilliant album, I tend to side with the Liberty execs on this one. Jan should have devoted his energy (and George Tipton's) to cranking out more new songs, like Brian Wilson and everyone else was doing, rather than repeating his earlier material in symphonic form. I'd have saved Pop Symphony for later, after starting my own label, had I been in Jan's place.
In the late '60s, had it not been for the accident, finding a lyricist comparable to Asher or Van Dyke Parks may have been Jan's best bet. And working with an outside lyricist would have made it necessary for him to scale back his "my way or the highway" stance--but he'd done that before, when working with Brian Wilson. I get the impression that Jan could be diplomatic when he needed to be.
