The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys
TBA
So this is where it all started. The Beach Boys are often lauded for being lo-fi indie pop pioneers, particularly on the trio of studio albums they released between 1967-68, but I find this claim to be a bit contentious. Early masters of those albums tended to sound a bit fuzzy and distorted, whereas more recent mixes reveal that Brian and the boys were able to achieve a stunning amount of clarity within their homespun trappings.
This single, though? This is proper DIY. It's basically a dry run for Young Marble Giants, albeit with Gen X anxiety swapped for early '60s cocky Americana. You see, the Beach Boys weren't exactly Capitol stablemates yet, meaning the only studio they had access to was a scrappy little one owned by Hite & Dorinda Morgan, family friends of the Wilsons. With their limited equipment, the Morgans do their best to capture the spark of a nascent idea - surf lyrics set to Chuck Berry rhythms. The concept sounds a bit faddish, but this was the era of the twist and other such crazes, so the Morgans no doubt had dollar signs in their eyes.
The Beach Boys, on the other hand, sound so naive on this single you'd think they had never even heard of money. It's a far cry from future recordings in which monetary concerns seem to dictate their every move. On here, the innocence is comparatively refreshing and even poignant - you can imagine Carl was probably making more money mowing his neighbor's lawn than from music at this time.
Like I said, the boys struck a unique premise for their debut outing, one that would become their trademark for a few years - upbeat, beach-themed rock and roll tempered by sweet, brotherly harmonies. But this single finds the band exploring that idea about three weeks after conceiving it - if that! - so as a result it's presented in a very primordial form. For a band that would soon become renowned for their busy, maximalist arrangements, Surfin' notably features only three different instruments! No drum kit, no electricity even - just an acoustic guitar, an upright bass and Brian tapping a snare drum with a pencil. It's so crude that it sounds less like rock and roll and more like skiffle as interpreted by teenage fans of the Dominoes.
And yet the truly essential ingredients are readily apparent from the get-go: catchy songwriting craft, pitch-perfect harmonies and a charismatic lead vocal from Cousin Mike. Besides, there had already been a precedent for extremely DIY recordings becoming pop hits: in 1959, The Fleetwoods scored a number one hit with Come Softly to Me, a song that consisted solely of intimate group vocals and rattling car keys for percussion. In comparison, Surfin' sounds positively professional.
The B-side, Luau is rarely talked about by even the most ardent Beach Boy obsessives, possibly because it was a song loaned to the group (or perhaps forced on them) by Hite and Dorinda Morgan's son, Bruce. The song itself isn't too bad, with the lyrics extolling the virtues of beachy shenanigans over a bouncy, proto-Strangeloves melody. But the boys sound utterly uninspired by the admittedly cheesy material which has been foisted upon them. In fact, they consistently rush through the melody as if they want to get through recording it as swiftly as possible - or maybe they had trouble keeping up with Brian's unsteady snare hits. Speaking of Brian, he absolutely steals the show on this number. The song introduces a minor-key middle eight which might have sounded a bit schmaltzy and Tin Pan Alley in the hands of a less inspired singer (say, Jan Berry), but Brian absolutely soars, injecting the song with a much-needed layer of mystique and intrigue. His tenor, though slightly tremulous and distracted-sounding, already stands out with the finesse that would grace their future, more polished recordings.
This single was recorded over a half-year after the previous one, and although it covers the same songwriting ground as Surfin', in just about every other way Surfin' Safari runs circles around its predecessor. It's easy to understand why when you consider how much momentum the group had made since their inaugural debut. Surfin' was a regional hit in Southern California - its rough and energetic sound probably earning the group brownie points from the legitimate surfing crowd for the first and only time - and on the basis of its success the newly-christened Beach Boys quickly got to work booking just about every dance hall and teen club that would grant them the stage for a night. As a result, they quickly sharpened their performance chops, and for that matter, they invested in electric instruments more befitting of a rock group aiming to excite sock hop patronage.
Additionally, the band have since found themselves a cozy spot on Capitol Records' roster, affording them session time at a professional Los Angeles studio, meaning that Surfin' Safari now cooks and shimmers in the way Brian probably envisioned the previous single in his head. On top of that, Dennis is no longer a mere harmony-man, and is now sat on a drum stool corralling his bandmates with snappy fills and infectious surf beats that sound more than a little inspired by, say, The Ventures. Carl, too, is closer than ever to sounding like his idol Chuck Berry, having invested in a shiny new electric guitar, which even takes the spotlight for a vibrant guitar solo in the middle eight.
This single also sets a precedent for the Beach Boys by basically functioning unofficially as a double A-side, with 409 proving just as popular as its flip. You'll notice as we continue on this journey that many subsequent singles by the boys will try to recreate this winning combination: surf song on the A-side, car song on the B-side. In the same way the group's odes to surfing were inspired by Dennis' actual passion for the sport, 409 was borne out of lyricist Gary Usher's genuine, borderline nerdy fascination with hot rods. Songs about hot rods would soon become inescapable for the next two years, but it all started here. They aren't banking on a craze, they're channeling somebody's real admiration for flashy automobiles, and that unfettered sincerity is part of what made the Beach Boys so inviting at this point in their career. That earnestness remained an asset for many years to come - no matter how big the Beach Boys got, even when they were making cameos in big-budget teen films, there was nothing showbiz or Hollywood about them. The fascinating cognitive dissonance between their simple, suburban demeanor and their majestic recording talents wound up possibly their most intoxicatingly disarming characteristic.
Anyways, we're getting ahead of ourselves. 409 finds the band trespassing the same sonic territory as the A-side, truly settling into their 'barbershop Chuck Berry' niche. But once again the energy is unbridled and raw, in a way not too different from the kind of material The Kingsmen would soon be setting to wax. Even their trademark harmonies are still simplistic at this point, with the Wilson brothers shyly delivering rudimentary triads behind Mike's more confident lead. Mike may have never stood on a surfboard in his life, and in all likelihood in 1962 he may have never even touched a hot rod, but on both sides of this single he sells the role of the cocky cool guy who knows his stuff. We all know Mike Love is a doofus, but when he slyly sneers that no one can touch his 409, it doesn't even sound like he's exaggerating. If the Beach Boys had lost steam in 1964, I really do think he could've made it as a TV actor or something.
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The Beach Boys often get a bad rap for seemingly having an allergy to consistency. Taking a closer look, you can kind of understand why. Across the dozens of studio albums the band have put together over their career, only one (Pet Sounds, duh) is generally considered to have no dud tracks whatsoever (and even then some fans are a bit cruel to Sloop John B). Despite all that, however, the group usually knew what they were doing in the singles department. Just taking a look at their '60s singles discography is borderline exhilarating - each entry capitalizing on the previous one and taking bolder creative steps, not to mention almost each one was a hit. Indeed, the sequence of A-sides the Beach Boys put out between 1961-71 is a borderline flawless testament to the band's stunning evolution.
Borderline is the key word today because, well, this thing exists. The band released their debut studio album Surfin' Safari in October 1962, and it did modestly well on the charts, for a bunch of pimply newcomers from Hawthorne anyways. Nick Venet, the young and savvy A&R of Capitol, was emboldened however by the top 20 success of its title track on the singles chart, and he wanted another hit pronto. Instead of waiting around for the boys to write and record a new one, he personally hand-selected two tracks from the new album that he thought would make waves on Billboard.
This single did not make waves on Billboard. So maybe I should have put the word 'savvy' in quotes earlier. For what it's worth, Brian was strongly against Indians being put out as a single at all, but had virtually no authority in the matter at the time. In fact, Venet's total blunder is thought to have been a catalyst for Brian being granted more control over the group's material and which songs would be released as singles. (As an aside, it is worth noting that Brian actually wanted "Chug-a-Lug", a communal ditty about drinking root beer, to be released as a single in place of this one. That would have been a slightly better pick, but not by much.)
You see, in the summer of 1962, Brian and Gary Usher were writing songs at a breakneck pace, seemingly knocking out a new one at the piano every afternoon. Even by those standards, Ten Little Indians was a throwaway. It's generous to even call it a Wilson/Usher composition, since it's basically a rock and roll revamp of the 19th century nursery rhyme of the same name, albeit with slightly updated lyrics. Oh, and some "ooh-loo-loo-loo" backing vocals which would be charming and inventive if they weren't so, you know. Problematic. It's incredible to fathom that just four years later Brian would be penning odes to the plight of the Native Americans, and the mistreatment they endured to make way for someone else's vision of America. But we'll get to the Smile project some other time.
Speaking of Smile, County Fair is the far superior side and vaguely hints at the quirky arrangements Brian would indulge in on that project. Don't get me wrong, it's still a bare-bones garage-surf stomper, but the boys make some novel decisions in their attempt to conjure a carnivalesque atmosphere. The vocal melody is consistently interrupted by interludes which make use of a rinky-dink organ and even some voice acting, including the aforementioned Nick Venet playing a barker. But it also helps that the vocal bit features perhaps the best melody on the entire album. Brian must've thought so too, because he actually recycled it for the far superior single I Do by The Castells, a collection of wedding vows set to a dreamy, Spectoresque backing track he would record in 1964. But County Fair is good fun, too. I mean, how many other Beach Boys songs end with Mike Love being called a loser by an anonymous woman? In a just world, the answer would be at least ten more.
And as far as Ten Little Indians goes, well, at least it sets the precedent for Brian's obsession with adapting nursery rhymes (see also: his later interpretations of "Shortnin' Bread" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic").
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On a pure songwriting level, Surfin' U.S.A. is not a whole lot different from Surfin' Safari, being yet another Chuck Berry-inspired rocker extolling the virtues of everyone's favorite beachy sport. Well, except maybe volleyball. Yes, the band are essentially running with the very same premise they devised all the way back in 1961, but two years later it sounds almost unrecognizable from its earliest permutation. On the Beach Boys' second album (also called Surfin' U.S.A.), Brian was given more freewill to experiment in the studio, and he immediately sought out ways to make his band sound as professional as all the other groups on the radio.
The first order of business was to introduce double-tracking, a vocal production technique that was becoming increasingly prominent on Brill Building records at the time. Brian applies this trick not only to Mike's lead, but to every single harmony line as well. The resulting sound thickens the mix to such a degree that it feels like a vast departure from the work on their previous album, the audio equivalent of going from greyscale to Technicolor. In addition to that, Brian makes use of some tasteful reverb and, for the first time in Beach Boys history, hires a session musician to play on the recording. The session guy in question is Frank DeVito (not to be confused with Danny DeVito, who plays Frank on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia), who temporarily takes Dennis' (not Dennis Reynolds from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) place behind the drumkit. He takes the rugged surf beat that was the band's trademark at this point and subtly tightens it up, peppering in some precise and crafty drum fills which make his jazz roots obvious.
The result is a song that doesn't sound like the work of a garage band out of Hawthorne. For the first time, the Beach Boys sound larger than life. Surfing no longer sounds like a mere sport, they make it sound like an other-worldly, fantastical activity. There's just one problem. The boys have finally gone a bit too far with their Chuck Berry influence, because this song is melodically a straight rip of Sweet Little Sixteen, so much so that Chuck's legal team managed to get him a writing credit on U.S.A.. I've sometimes seen the Beach Boys referred to as nefarious plagiarists on the same level as Led Zeppelin because of this mishap, but in actuality I think getting half of their royalties revoked caused the group to be much more conscious of writing original melodies from this point forward. It's also interesting to note that immediately after this debacle, Chuck's influence on the group's work becomes far less pronounced.
That being said, I do think the best and most memorable bit in Surfin' U.S.A. is Brian's falsetto hook, which is nowhere to be found in Sweet Little Sixteen. Unbelievably, that hook also marks the very first time Brian would employ his higher register on a Beach Boys single, having been somewhat shy about it throughout their earlier sessions. Perhaps he was emboldened by the recent success of fellow falsetto-man Frankie Valli?
Wishing to recreate the double-sided success of the Safari / 409 single, Capitol have placed another catchy car song on the flip, Shut Down. This song is also subject to the group's newfound production sheen, and even features a brand new instrument: the saxophone, which Mike whips out during the middle eight. And by "whips out" I mean he manages to honk two different notes - just barely! - but in the process ends up inventing the no wave genre, so who's really the genius of the Beach Boys after all? Skronk aside, I have never been very big on Shut Down, its melody just a little too sing-songy for my tastes, and the lyrics detailing a drag race saga which I'm sure is riveting if you have the ability to parse lyricist Roger Christian's ultra-specific car lingo. I do not. What the hell does "tach it up" even mean? When I was a kid I always thought they were singing "pack it up" which I think makes way more sense! Like, "You may as well pack it up, buddy, 'cause you're about to be shut down!" See, this is why I should've written lyrics for the Beach Boys.
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When this single hit the racks in July 1963, I can imagine many a skeptic took one look at the picture sleeve and scoffed, "Well well well, yet another surf song from the Beach Boys production line. I wonder which Chuck Berry song they're ripping off this time. Oh, and another hot rod song on the flip, how imaginative." Well, if any of these strawmen I created had been open-minded enough to set needle to wax, they would have quickly realized that both sides of this single actually represented a big leap forward for the boys.
The Beach Boys are well-known for their ballads. Their ability to go back and forth between goofy rockers and sensitive, heartfelt ballads is kind of a core part of their identity. And Brian had the ability to write said ballads from the very beginning, but it wouldn't be until two years after their formation that he would be able to showcase them to the world. You see, Surfer Girl actually dates back to early 1962, and is thought to be Brian's first attempt at writing a follow-up to their debut Surfin' single. They had even recorded an embryonic version at Hite & Dorinda Morgan's studio, and in an alternate universe where the Beach Boys stayed true to Candix Records, it might've ended up their sophomore single. It's a good thing it didn't because this sluggish early version did not do the composition any favors - it even features a spoken-word bridge. Yuck.
But then the band signed to Capitol, who strongly discouraged any notion the band may have had of recording a ballad. Why is that? Surely it wasn't uncommon in the 60s for pop artists to try their hand at more sensitive material. Elvis had been whipped into shape while in the army, and came back to America a mature, settled-down crooner of consummate pop. Doo-wop bad boys Dion & The Belmonts were making records even the moms could dig with renditions of standards like When You Wish Upon a Star. Bobby Darin, once concerned only with splishing and splashing in the tub, was the reigning monarch of lounge lizards by the time the '60s swung around. So, why not the Beach Boys?
Well, all the artists I just mentioned were being marketed in a completely different way from the Beach Boys. Simply put, those artists were popstars. They were photogenic, glamorous singers with a tightly-honed image, and their versatility was considered an asset, akin to a multifaceted cabaret act. The Beach Boys had performed some popular songs, but Capitol did not yet perceive them to be 'stars' like those singers. They were five scrappy, unassuming guys from a Californian suburb who made music for sock hops and malt shop jukeboxes. They weren't expected to be anything more than a fad. All Capitol wanted to do was to capitalize on the fad, squeeze the band for all the money they were worth, and then move on in a year or two. In their minds, to have released a ballad as a follow-up to Surfin' Safari would have meant a total halting of their momentum. Surely, that's not what the kids wanted, right?
The Beach Boys didn't want their momentum to halt, either, so they played ball. You'll notice that the Safari album doesn't have a single ballad to its name - the closest is Dennis' cutesy heartthrob ditty "Little Girl (You're My Miss America)", but even that song has an upbeat, shuffly rhythm. You can't exactly slow-dance to it. Around the same time as that album's sessions, Brian and Gary Usher wrote their first song together, the gorgeous and ruminative "Lonely Sea", but even that wouldn't make it onto a piece of vinyl until the Surfin' U.S.A. album came out a year later. Still, inauspiciously tucked into side one of that album, "Lonely Sea" marked the very first time the boys would brave putting out a piece of balladry.
So clearly the tides were changing. With the Surfin' U.S.A. single going to #3 on the Billboard charts, Capitol was beginning to realize the Beach Boys were not merely a passing phase - they not only had staying power, but the boys themselves were starting to become recognizable celebrities, aided by their increasingly frequent TV appearances. All of a sudden a gooey, doo-woppy, surf-themed ballad sung by one of the most popular members of the group didn't sound like such a bad idea. Which brings us, finally, to the release of this single.
It really is a good thing the band sat on the song for over a year, because it allowed them to polish it into the shining gem that it is - in fact, it's easily the first perfect A-side they've released. Having been a staple of the group's shows ever since it had been written, the boys sound perfectly at ease performing it in the studio. The song's swaying 6/8 lilt distinctly evokes the image of waves gently rolling in and out of the sea, while the cascading vocal melody weaves up and down, representing the narrator's surging emotions as he walks alongside his surfer girl. And that spoken-word bridge I mentioned earlier has now been fleshed out into a gorgeously sung bridge - the other boys retreat to the background as Brian delivers a quiet, intimate portrait of all the things he would like to do with his lover, even though for now he has to be content just walking along the sand with her. In a way, this pining for all the romantic adventures he wishes he could go on links the song to future statements of intent such as Wouldn't It Be Nice.
If the Beach Boys had been the fad band Capitol envisioned them to be, it would have been so easy for Surfer Girl to be a totally hokey exercise on principle, perhaps even a calculated move. A surf band releasing a romantic doo-wop paean to an anonymous beach beauty, it all sounds like it could've been so Hollywood and phony. But the magic thing is that it's not. It's true that Brian did not, in fact, know any 'surfer girls' that could serve as a songwriting muse. And yet I feel like his genuine yearning to find that idyllic woman, and the adventures such a romance would inspire, comes through both lyrically and in the wistful tug-and-pull of the vocal melody. That is why this song has outlived so many other teen pop ballads of the era. Said vocal melody is performed sensitively by Brian himself, singing lead on a Beach Boys single for the first time (aside from the middle eight on Luau). His rich falsetto, which he occasionally teased us with on Surfin' U.S.A., is now placed squarely in the spotlight, and it is surely a thing to behold. From this point on, the Beach Boys would no longer be seen as a pure surf rock band, and Brian's falsetto would become just as much of a core trademark.
The B-side, Little Deuce Coupe, takes us back to familiar, Mike-led car song territory, but even this song does things a bit differently. Up to this point, Dennis had played the same snappy 4/4 surf beat on just about every Beach Boys song, but this single finds him stretching out on both sides. First we had the A-side's aforementioned 6/8 rhythm, and on Coupe he makes use of a bouncy, bluesy shuffle. That groove is punctuated by a prominent boogie-woogie piano part played by Brian, which leads one to imagine that maybe his source of inspiration had briefly switched from Chuck Berry to Fats Domino. The lyrics, written by car freak Roger Christian, are typical of his prose, being an ultra-specific, starry-eyed tribute to a cool-looking hot rod. While it leaves me a little cold in that regard, I can't help but admit that by the end of the song's short runtime (a measly 1:38!! Who do they think they are, PinkPantheress??), they have totally sold me on how rad this minuscule deuce coupe must be. Excitingly, the chorus makes use of a repeating V-ii7 progression that stands out as the most interesting use of chords in a Beach Boys song yet. Suffice it to say, even more fascinating chord progressions were to come.
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On its surface, Be True to Your School doesn't sound like much of a leap forward for the Beach Boys. If anything, after the surprising sensitivity of Surfer Girl, this track may seem a bit regressive even, since their feet are now firmly planted back in chirpy, Mike-led territory. Today, though, I'm going to make a case for this weird pep rally of a single actually being yet another creative leap for the boys.
Perhaps most obviously, it marks the point where they start trying to branch out in terms of subject matter. It was their first non-surfing themed A-side in quite a while, and their first one ever if you decide to wipe Ten Little Indians out of the canon like the Beach Boys did. Instead we find Mike paying the most passionate of allegiances to his school, presumably high school, even though the Lovester was old enough to be out of college by 1963.
Possibly one of the Beach Boys' most underrated talents is their ability to create music that perfectly evokes whatever topic they are singing about. On their early surfing singles, Carl makes use of watery, reverb-drenched guitar tones to conjure up images of the beach, while Dennis' surging drums remind the listener of the rise and fall of unruly waves. The band was smart enough to know that sound wouldn't exactly match the lyrical content of Be True to Your School, so they go for something entirely different. The whole thing basically sounds like it's being performed by a high school marching band who traded their tubas for electric guitars, complete with cheerleader chants performed by the Honeys, a girl group Brian was concurrently producing and that Capitol was trying to market as the feminine yin to the Beach Boys' masculine yang. They never had any hits, which is a shame, because Brian arranged some extremely inspired tracks for them, many of them boasting a brash Wall of Sound reminiscent of The Crystals.
By late 1963, that particular sound was starting to seep into the Beach Boys' work as well, and this is the first single in their discography that makes Brian's burgeoning Spector influence apparent - as soon as the dramatic, half-time intro kicks in, you're treated to a chorus of harmonizing baritone saxes, an arrangement choice that was trendy at the Brill Building, but completely unheard of from a rock band at that time. And listen, I get it if you dislike Be True to Your School, I really do. Its triumphant proselytizing can be borderline headache-inducing if you're not in the mood, and when the organ solo kicks in playing the Hawthorne High School anthem it starts to sound like a demented fever dream circus. But that alone proves how interesting the arrangement on this track is, and even the chord progressions in the chorus are a bit trickier than anything else the band had put out at this point. What I'm saying is the pathway to Smile is becoming considerably less foggy.
In My Room had been written a little while back by Brian and Gary Usher, before their songwriting partnership deteriorated during the Surfin' U.S.A. sessions. But the group had saved it up until this point, having only just eased themselves into the position of recording ballads. This song is a huge breakthrough for the Beach Boys, marking the first time they would directly tackle more vulnerable themes of insecurity. Entering the music industry was a validating experience for a young Brian Wilson who hadn't heard enough compliments growing up. This nationwide acceptance of his music inspired him to pen increasingly soul-bearing, introspective work, even if he needed an interpreter such as Gary to properly channel his feelings into words.
In My Room is ostensibly sung from the perspective of a teenager, because, well, when you're that age, your room is pretty much the only place you have to call your own. For an adolescent, a bedroom takes on the role of a sanctuary as well as a medium of personal expression - the items that fill the space in that room, the posters on the wall, they all reflect a part of this person's identity. That's why when you're a teenager, when the outside world becomes far too overbearing and confusing, your room is just about the only place in the world where everything seems to make sense. But Room also functions on a more universal level - I think everyone on this planet can relate to the need to momentarily step away from the chatter of the outside world in order to reflect, recalibrate and ruminate. Once again, the song's arrangement perfectly matches its theme. It may be another ballad in 6/8 time, but it's not a swelling doo-wop number like Surfer Girl. In fact, it's almost ghostly in its solemnity, and even when the five-part vocals come in it still sounds shockingly intimate. What's more, the musicians all seem to be quietly tapping away at their instruments, almost as if they don't want to wake up their parents upstairs, which in effect perfectly evokes the quiet hum of one's bedroom at night.
So basically you have an A-side that predicts the loopy, carnivalesque approach of Smile and a B-side that points the way towards Pet Sounds with its bittersweet, self-reflective balladry. Yeah, I can't give this single anything less than an 8.
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