{"id":302296,"date":"2026-02-17T09:33:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T09:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/302296\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T09:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T09:33:09","slug":"the-record-label-wanted-another-california-girls-the-beach-boys-gave-them-a-song-that-changed-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/302296\/","title":{"rendered":"The record label wanted another \u2018California Girls\u2019. The Beach Boys gave them a song that changed the world"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike Love left it to the very last minute to make his contribution to what was, at the time, the longest, most elaborate and expensive pop recording in history. \u201cI\u2019d taken my time doing the lyrics, because it kept changing from studio to studio and version to version,\u201d Love, one of two of the Beach Boys\u2019 surviving original members, recalls. \u201cSo finally, this is it, the day of recording the vocals, so that\u2019s when I dictated the lyrics to my ex-wife, Suzanne, on the way to the studio.\u201d <\/p>\n

Love\u2019s studio-based Beach Boys bandmate Brian Wilson, <\/a>who died in June last year, aged 82, had spent seven months, around 20 sessions over four studios and between $10,000 and $50,000 \u2013 the equivalent of half a million dollars today, making it the most expensive single song ever recorded \u2013 obsessively perfecting the backing track of his ultimate teenage symphony to God. But, plucked from the air on the 20-minute drive from Burbank to Columbia Studios in LA in September 1966, Love\u2019s lyrics were a bolt of sheer flower-powered inspiration: \u201cI love the colourful clothes she wears, the way the sunlight plays upon her hair\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat song was done at a time when the Vietnam War was going on,\u201d Love tells me of \u201cGood Vibrations\u201d \u2013 the global Number One hit that was started 60 years ago today and finally finished as Love drew up to the studio in September 1966. \u201cThere was student unrest in the US. We were all concerned about our draft status. Carl Wilson became a conscientious objector. The FBI wanted him to join the military but he wasn\u2019t about to do that. There were all kinds of terrible things, as there always are all around the world,\u201d Love says. \u201cBut I wanted to accentuate the positive. I wanted to make it about peace and love and a girl who was into nature and love and positivity.\u201d<\/p>\n

His legendary chorus hook \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m picking up good vibrations, she\u2019s giving me excitations\u201d \u2013 gave Brian similar feelings; a summation of the deeply rooted poptimism he\u2019d been trying to satiate for most of the year. \u201cHis mom said that animals, particularly dogs, pick up vibrations that human beings don\u2019t,\u201d Love says. \u201cSo I think the idea of a vibration just appealed to him. It was kinda mystical, mystical and abstract. And Brian was very capable of getting extremely mystical when it came to music. That was what separated him from so many others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like so many legendary singles, \u201cGood Vibrations\u201d was the result of a record label hearing a work of brilliant, undiluted artistry and demanding the band whack a hit like the last one on it. Having retired from touring with The Beach Boys<\/a> to concentrate on studio composition in 1964, Brian Wilson had laboured long \u2013 his piano in a sandbox to feel the beach at his feet as he wrote \u2013 to make 1966\u2019s Pet Sounds his melancholy masterpiece. Lashed with the lustrous textures of The Wrecking Crew \u2013 the loose collective of around 30 top-class LA session musicians behind dozens of Sixties hits \u2013 and some of Wilson\u2019s most heart-stopping melodies, the record would inspire The Beatles to greater heights of creativity. Today it is considered one of the greatest albums ever made.<\/p>\n

Capitol Records, however, didn\u2019t hear a hit. \u201cThey had played the album to their promotional department, and they didn\u2019t know what to do with it, because it was such a departure,\u201d Love says. \u201cAnd [Beach Boys A&R man] Karl Engemann, the nicest guy that you ever could possibly want to meet, he said, \u2018Gee, guys, this is great. But couldn\u2019t you come up with something more like \u2018California Girls\u2019, \u2018I Get Around\u2019 or \u2018Fun, Fun, Fun\u2019?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

The Beach Boys in 1965 (L-R) Dennis Wilson, Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Al Jardine, Mike Love (Getty)<\/p>\n

An early version of \u201cGood Vibrations\u201d was suggested, but its upbeat tone didn\u2019t suit the more ruminative feel of Pet Sounds. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t fit thematically, it doesn\u2019t fit lyrically and it certainly doesn\u2019t fit musically,\u201d says Peter Doggett, author of last year\u2019s Wilson biography Surf\u2019s Up: Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. \u201cIt\u2019s much more of an R&B-flavoured feel. Very early on, as soon as he\u2019d cut the backing track, [Brian] was talking to friends about giving the track to Wilson Pickett or maybe Marvin Gaye.\u201d <\/p>\n

Instead, Wilson kept the song for himself, and over the course of 1966, while his bandmates embarked on their first tour of Japan, it became a source of intense obsession as he strived to realise the climactic sounds he could hear in his head. \u201cObsession was the name of the game for Brian Wilson by \u201966,\u201d says Doggett. \u201cIt certainly seems, in personal psychological terms, the song represented something to him beyond a Beach Boys record. There was something about this ethereal idea of good vibrations that completely took him over because it was what he was trying to make out of music and what he was experiencing through the various chemical and herbal concoctions that he was taking into his body at that point as well.\u201d Wilson would later admit that \u201cGood Vibrations\u201d was first written on marijuana and something of an ode to his experiments with LSD. \u201cThe problem with the record, for him,\u201d says Doggett, \u201cwas how do you capture an overwhelming feeling rather than a particular song?\u201d<\/p>\n

It certainly seems, in personal psychological terms, the song represented something to Brian beyond a Beach Boys record<\/p>\n

Peter Doggett<\/p>\n

The more Wilson tried to record it, shepherding The Wrecking Crew from studio to studio over the coming months, the more he realised the song needed to be constructed in sections rather than as a single complete recording. \u201cI wanted to write a song with more than one level,\u201d he said, midway through 1966, \u201cso that the song can be more meaningful. A song can, for instance, have movements \u2013 in the same way as a classical concerto \u2013 only capsulised.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doggett points to \u201cEleanor Rigby\u201d as another song of the era that aimed to shift previously disposable pop music in the direction of high art, but with its multiple, shifting sections \u2013 its playful opening, its theremin-driven chorus, its pop-stretching interludes and its classical choral climax \u2013 \u201cGood Vibrations\u201d was a far more ambitious and fully realised symphonic enterprise. \u201cWhen Brian starts using the fragmentary process and the collage basis, he has fallen headlong, without realising it, into the tradition of modernism,\u201d says Doggett. \u201cHe\u2019s using techniques and theories that had become standard in literature and in the visual arts and film as well. But he was really the first person to apply those particular high-art principles to pop.\u201d <\/p>\n

A sign of the genius mind, to so avidly pursue a vision? \u201cAbsolutely,\u201d says Love. \u201cIt\u2019s brilliance by Brian. Between that and the Pet Sounds tracks, it\u2019s the apex of his creative abilities, there\u2019s no question about it.\u201d Love recalls nicknaming Brian \u201cDog Ears\u201d at the time. \u201cBecause he could hear things that other people couldn’t. When we did maybe 25 takes on one section of \u2018Wouldn\u2019t it Be Nice\u2019, I said, \u2018That\u2019s perfect, Brian\u2019. He said, \u2018No, do it again\u2019. So the vibration of those vocals, when listened to by themselves, they\u2019re literally amazing. It amazes me and I was in the group.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Clockwise<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Clockwise from top left, the Beach Boys in 1964: Carl Wilson (1946-1998), Dennis Wilson (1944-1983), Brian Wilson, Al Jardine and Mike Love (Getty)<\/p>\n

Despite their concerns about the song\u2019s cost and commercial prospects, The Beach Boys were blown away by the finished product. \u201cAbsolutely, it was worth the effort,\u201d says Love. \u201cIt was brilliant. It was unique. It was so avant garde. I think it\u2019s still avant garde, and it came out in 1966. And [it] was such a perfect thing for the time, which was so contentious worldwide, as it is now\u2026 Finding something positive, in light of all the things that were going on at the time, is what made it special.\u201d<\/p>\n

The world agreed. Dubbed a \u201cpocket symphony\u201d by their publicist Derek Taylor, \u201cGood Vibrations\u201d became The Beach Boys\u2019 first million-selling Number One hit and had an immense impact on the immediate 1960s pop scene. Coming from a band as big as The Beach Boys, it validated the emerging hippie counterculture and laid the beach blanket on which the following year\u2019s Summer of Love would make like a daisy-clad Eyes Wide Shut. And its revolutionary multi-part construction, in such a massive hit record, opened the door for a generation of progressive pop visionaries \u2013 it\u2019s thanks to \u201cGood Vibrations\u201d that we got \u201cA Day in the Life\u201d, the Abbey Road medley, \u201cBohemian Rhapsody\u201d and \u201cParanoid Android\u201d.<\/p>\n

For Wilson himself the song was a mixed blessing. Arguably his peak artistic achievement, yes, but one that hobbled the art to come. \u201cWhat happens when you demolish the structure of the popular song, and still get it to communicate?\u201d Doggett asks. \u201cAfter that point [Brian] lost the sense of what a song was.\u201d He points to \u201cHeroes and Villains\u201d \u2013 the single that emerged from Wilson\u2019s increasingly erratic studio session for the subsequent, abandoned Smile project, which involved Wilson starting a fire in the studio and a visiting Paul McCartney reportedly chewing vegetables on one track \u2013 as an example of Wilson\u2019s loosening grip on his own genius. \u201c\u2019Good Vibrations\u2019 marks the end of the moment when Brian Wilson knew exactly what he was doing in the studio and exactly how to achieve it,\u201d he says. \u201cFor psychological reasons, for band politics reasons, health reasons, financial reasons, it\u2019s a real dividing line in the Beach Boys\u2019 story. It\u2019s almost so perfect that it kills what [came] next.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\u2018For<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

\u2018For psychological reasons, for band politics reasons, health reasons, financial reasons, it\u2019s a real dividing line in the Beach Boys\u2019 story\u2019 (AP)<\/p>\n

The song endures, though, as one of the most ambitious, influential and uplifting pieces of music of all time. Love was overjoyed to see the song top a list of the happiest songs ever recorded,<\/a> scientifically compiled by music psychologist Dr Michael Bonshor in 2023. The song beat \u201cHouse of Fun\u201d by Madness, Billy Joel\u2019s \u201cUptown Girl\u201d and The Village People\u2019s \u201cYMCA\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe really researched it and did it scientifically,\u201d Love says, pleased that he helped create such a beacon of good vibes in an otherwise bleak world. \u201cIt was a true collaboration, Brian\u2019s brilliance and my spontaneous lyrical offerings, I was able to make. And it just happened to result in probably one of the most successful recordings we ever made. And we\u2019ve made some good ones, too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mike Love left it to the very last minute to make his contribution to what was, at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":{"0":"post-302296","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}