The Beach Boys Story
BBC 6 Music
A six-hour series on the Beach Boys incorporating broadcast material both old and new (8-13 June, 4am) was so detailed, it sounded like an amorous and occasionally neurotic letter of persuasion to doubters, even giving us a precis of what surfing is. “A watersport where the participant stands on a floating piece of wood shaped like an ironing board.” Got it.
Then, of course, the archive monologues by wives of the band (“Well, one day Brian spilled hot chocolate on me”) and their husbands (“So we bumped into each other at a hamburger stand and someone said Mike can sing pretty good and then there’s Dennis, too – Dennis was always up for anything – and later we went round to Carl’s and he said . . .”)
While there are those who will tell you that Pet Sounds is one of the most influential records of all time, and there can be no denying that, around the age of 33, the sandybearded Dennis Wilson was the kind of sexy you feel in your bones – I’m talking actually feeling someone’s charisma neuralgically – still the Beach Boys could be proper tedious. Their song about root beer goes: “Root beer, oh root beer./ Root beer, oh root beer./ Root beer is my best buy./Cold beer, root beer, here a mug, there a mug, everybody chug-a-lug . . .” It’s only an early number, but Christ. And Mike Love sued Brian in the 1990s for leaving his name off the writing credits!
There’s a great story about BW going to see the bosses at Capital Records after they objected to any songs from the band that were not about root beer or surfing, and he showed up with a tape player with eight prerecorded, looped responses including “No comment” and “Can you repeat that?”. Refusing to utter a word, he played the various tapes when appropriate.
You can hear precisely that kind of pernickitiness coming through in “God Only Knows”, roundly accepted as one of the most romantic songs committed to vinyl. “If you should ever leave me/though life would still go on, believe me/the world could show nothing to me . . .” Hold on. Is it just me or does that not sound like mealy-mouthed nitpicking, or weirdly inappro priate small print, given the moment and the presence of an at-the-time groundbreaking number of 23 backing musicians? Life would still go on, believe me. And so defensive to boot! Give me “Here, There and Everywhere” any day.
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