Surf's Up: 5 Songs for Brian Wilson
This week's songs are from the Beach Boys
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been listening to Sly & the Family Stone and the Beach Boys all week. Listening to 1973’s Fresh, which includes a cover of “Que Sera Sera,” I was reminded of an interesting connection between the two men: both were friends with Terry Melcher, a record producer and A&R rep for Columbia Records, and son of Doris Day. He was the connection between the Beach Boys and Charles Manson, who was trying to score a record deal, and also a one-time resident of the house on Cielo Drive.
One of my earliest childhood memories is in pre-school, my friend and I in the play area singing “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys. Brian Wilson wasn’t involved with the song or the recording in any way, but I mention it to note that the Beach Boys were probably the first band I was aware of, before I had any real idea of what a band was.
I got around to Pet Sounds later, when learning the mythology around the Beach Boys’ competition with the Beatles to put out the better album. Rubber Soul inspired Brian Wilson to push further with Pet Sounds, which pushed the Beatles on Sgt. Peppers. In the timeline in my head, it went: surfing songs, “Good Vibrations,” Pet Sounds, “Kokomo.” Then one day I asked myself “What’s between Pet Sounds and ‘Kokomo’?” and answering that is how I started to love the Beach Boys. A lot of the 70s Beach Boys stuff is great. Musically it’s pretty adventurous, and a lot of lyrics are so silly they are endearing, but Brian isn’t involved in a lot of it. But getting into that helped tune my ear a little bit further—being able to identify a Brian song from a Carl song, from a Mike song, or the rare Dennis song, in the same way you can with the Beatles. It’s not even the singing, there are melodic touchstones.
Brian Wilson’s impact on music is massive: the work and artists he inspired, the boundaries he pushed, the subjects he explored, the beguiling emotions he was able to articulate, the embrace of session musicians and using the studio as an instrument. For most music legends, image, iconography, and intangibles like cool and style often matter as much as the music. But the Beach Boys were never hip. For Brian Wilson especially, it really is all about the songs. And there are too many good ones to limit myself to one. So we’ll have to get back to regularly scheduled programming next week.
Here are 5 songs from the genius of Brian Wilson.
“To wear a floral shirt is an experience” - Brian Wilson
The Beach Boys - “Add Some Music To Your Day”
Brian Wilson believed music “was the voice of God.” This song then is him preaching the gospel. Music can make your day better, connects people, offers companionship. We know this to be true. But to frame it in such a lush and warm picture delivers on that message and then some. The song is on Sunflower, which came out in 1970—the same year Led Zeppelin III and Black Sabbath’s Paranoid were among the top selling albums. Post Woodstock, Post Altamont. The musical world was in a much, much different and darker place. Yet this has the sincerity and innocence of pre-Beatles pop music; in other words, it’s pretty square. And yet, within the first 10 seconds of the song, you feel better than you did before it was on. It’s the final verse that really gets me, though. It’s a short list of all places one can expect music to show up; but the moments it calls to mind—big and small—are so rooted in personal, highly emotional memories. It heightens the emotion in the song, and elevates music to the mystical.
At a movie you can feel it touching your heart
And on every day of the summertime
You'll hear children chasing ice cream carts
They'll play it on your wedding day
There must be 'bout a million ways
To add some music to your day
"Spector has always been a big thing with me. I mean I heard [‘Be My Baby’] three and a half years ago and I knew that it was between him and me. I knew exactly where he was at and now I’ve gone beyond him.” - Brian Wilson
The Beach Boys - “Don’t Worry Baby”
Wilson wrote “Don’t Worry Baby” as a tribute/response to the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” and submitted the song for them to record. When it was rejected, he brought it to the Beach Boys. The connection of the two songs is pretty obvious, notably with the opening drums, the quick burst in from the rest of the tracks: a soupy mix of guitar, piano, and vocals. It’s a wonderful bridge from the Doo-Wop and early 60s girl groups, into the miniature pop symphonies of Pet Sounds. Girl groups sang about love with an optimism and confidence; “Don’t Worry Baby” is very much the opposite. Yet the hand-wringing and timidity of the singer is mitigated by the assuring words of the woman he’s hoping to win. There’s no big magic moment, or love-at-first-sight fireworks. It’s grounded in uncertainty and a gentle tenderness—something truer to the emotions of teenage romance than singing about marriage at first sight. Despite the assurances that “everything will turn out alright,” in the lyrics, the vocal melody has a melancholy that shows the singer is resigned to the fact that it probably won’t.
"Beware the lollipop of mediocrity; lick it once and you'll suck forever." - Brian Wilson
The Beach Boys - “Vega-Tables”
Wilson sought to follow Pet Sounds with an even more ambitious work he described as “a teenage symphony to God.” He was soon running between three different LA studios, constantly tinkering with a batch of songs, conducting an impromptu dinner-ware drum circle of party guests at his house, promising to put it on the album, and keeping a studio full of session players waiting while he determined if the vibrations in the room were good that day. It took longer for his mental illness and drug use to fully come into view. After listening to the material, the other Beach Boys rejected it as not commercial, and dissolved the project (Smile). Some of the songs made it onto future released, but the albums as a whole wasn’t completed or released until 2004. Around this time, Wilson enlisted Van Dyke Parks to help craft lyrics for his songs. Sometimes it paid dividends, other times it seems dismissed any input. There’s the famous story of Paul McCartney walking around with the melody to “Yesterday” but was singing “Scrambled Eggs,” until he hit something better. Here, Wilson didn’t care to put the time in on this one, embracing the “first idea; best idea” mentality, with a song about eating vegetables.
A less-weird version of the song was released on 1967’s Smiley Smile, which was a neutered, salvage job of Wilson’s Smile sessions. I prefer this version. You can hear Frank Zappa and children’s music, but also this wouldn’t be out of place coming from Grizzly Bear or Animal Collective even now. It is weird and complex—something that requires conviction and likely a lot of takes to get right, so forget what you’re even singing about.
“I figure no one is educated musically 'til they've heard Pet Sounds. I love the orchestra, the arrangements – it may be going overboard to say it's the classic of the century – but to me, it certainly is a total, classic record that is unbeatable in many ways.” - Paul McCartney
The Beach Boys - “I’m Waiting For The Day”
Pet Sounds was not always considered a masterpiece, and sold far less than previous Beach Boys albums. But what masterpieces are immediately accepted as such on initial release? With time, the brilliant use of harmonies is a given. The orchestral quality is lauded. The abandonment of typical pop song structures is open for endless analysis and comparisons to the great composers. But the most distinct element of Pet Sounds for me is the percussion. “God Only Knows”, “I Know There’s An Answer”, “Here Today,” and of course “I’m Waiting For The Day.” This off-kilter use of percussion was present before Pet Sounds—give “I Get Around” another listen, just for the various percussion and rhythm choices. But Pet Sounds has so many different elements and syncopations, it sounds like Wonka’s gobstopper machine was an instrument in the studio. Apparently at least one track includes famed Wrecking Crew drummer Hal Blaine banging on an empty plastic water jug.
A few years ago I was at a summer office party, where a number of tracks from Pet Sounds were on the playlist. I watched as a fellow music nerd, while playing bags and seemingly maintaining a conversation, was making unique hand motions for all the different percussive elements in the songs, like he had an invisible sound board of bells, horns, cranks, and pedals in front of him. This has little to do with “I’m Waiting For the Day” itself, but I think it’s the best example of what I’m getting at from the album. And it’s like the sixth best song on the album, which shows how on-his-game Wilson was at this time.
“Jesus, that ear. He should donate it to the Smithsonian. He made all his records with four tracks, but you couldn’t make his records if you had a hundred tracks today.” - Bob Dylan
The Beach Boys - “Mona”
Back when I was connecting the dots between Pet Sounds and “Kokomo,” much like Brian Wilson, I ran out of steam right around Love You. A friend of mine loves this album, in part because it’s so weird. And he’s right-it is lovably weird in a way that makes you wonder how anyone allowed them to record these songs let alone release them. It’s mostly Brian songs-and he leans hard into synthesizers to do a lot of the instrumental heavy-lifting. That, along with very pedestrian subject matter, means Wilson brings to mind Wesley Willis at times (“Johnny Carson”). And to be sure, even Wesley Willis was compelling and offered a few memorable melodies.
The song I enjoy the most off Love You by a few miles is “Mona.” Like “Don’t Worry Baby,” it’s also very Phil Spector influenced. It’s got the child-like innocence of the early Beach Boys. And yet, it’s got a very gruff sounding Dennis on lead vocals. It sounds like Tom Waits or a Rowlf the Dog covering the Ramones. And yet it’s the sweetness and innocence that shines through. Pure Brian.
Full playlists of songs featured in 5 Songs: