Brian Wilson

The death earlier this month of Brian Wilson brought out a welcome reconsideration of the Beach Boys’ legacy. They were one of my two favorite groups of my high school days, 1961-64. The other was the Four Seasons. These were the yin and yang of those years in rock’n’roll: the Beach Boys were the West Coast–sun, surf, hot rods, California girls. The Four Seasons were the East Coast–urban grit, class difference, doomed love. Bright and happy versus dark and anguished. Needless to say, at 16 in a boys’ prep school, I tended toward the latter.

Surfin’ was released in 1961 and caught my attention well before the Boys hit it big the following year with Surfin’ Safari. The latter solidified a gimmick I loved: a surf song on one side of the record, a car song–in this case 409–on the other. I knew as little about cars as I did surfing, or surfin’, as they insisted, which only increased the attraction of their music: a world I didn’t know but could appreciate from afar (somewhat similar to my infatuation with Elvis). 1963 was their apogee, before being eclipsed by the Beatles and the British Invasion. Surfer Girl established their ballad bona fides, while Little Deuce Coupe carried on the hot-rod B-sides. The Beach Boys were still getting better, and Brian Wilson’s songwriting more sophisticated, in 1964, with Wendy, Little Honda, When I Grow Up (To Be a Man) and I Get Around. I have an especially warm spot for Fun, Fun, Fun. I was singing along in my senior year dorm room one evening when the housemaster stopped by and “posted” me (the step beyond a demerit) for playing my radio after 8. I found the Beach Boys less interesting after high school. Two of their 1965 hits, Barbara Ann and Sloop John B., were retreads that appealed to the lowest common taste. They had one more great single in 1966, Wouldn’t It Be Nice, but that era is more notable for their so-called masterpiece, Good Vibrations, which I couldn’t stand then or now. Gone was the straight-ahead rock, as well as the world of cars and surf. I am quite fond of a 1972 album, Holland, which takes us back to California, but this is a coda to the Beach Boys’ era. (Yes, they had one more hit, Kokomo, 16 years later, but this was without Brian Wilson.)

The Four Seasons burst on the scene in 1962 with Sherry, a number one hit as was the even better follow-up, Big Girls Don’t Cry. Their third consecutive chart-topper, Walk Like A Man, accompanied me as I walked around campus junior year, and that summer they followed it with the double-sided hit, Candy Girl/Marlena. Nothing, however, prepared me for the power of Dawn (Go Away), which at one point I judged the greatest rock song of all time. In a rank injustice from which I never recovered, it didn’t make number one because it came out at the same time as I Wanna Hold Your Hand. My longstanding antipathy toward the Beatles partly stemmed from my dismay at their superseding the homegrown Four Seasons. Still in 1964, the Seasons came out with Ronnie, Rag Doll and Big Man In Town, each of which was publicly overshadowed by the onslaught of Beatles music. Their songs went downhill after ’64: Bye, Bye, Baby and Let’s Hang On in 1965 were becoming formulaic; and their final top ten number, C’mon Marianne in 1967, is relatively charmless. Without going into a deep analysis, you can see a similarity in subject in all Four Seasons hits. There’s a guy longing for a girl. Sometimes she’s too good, sometimes he is, usually there’s some impediment or misunderstanding, there’s never true love running smooth. And although it isn’t explicit, you feel the boy and girl are in an inner city, not on a farm. Again, it wasn’t exactly my high school world, except for the longing for romance and general teenage angst.