The First of Many Things I Will Say About The Beach Boys

On "Surfer Girl"

There is an elemental magic to early Beach Boys. Y’know back when The Beach Boys sang about the beach, girls, how fast their car can go, when they were very much three brothers, a cousin, and a neighborhood friend from the South Bay. Before the drugs, before the baroque arrangements, before the international-superstardom, but, importantly, not before the genius of Brian Wilson.

Let’s take “Surfer Girl.” If you saw just the lyrics, you wouldn’t look twice:

Little surfer, little one,
Makes my heart come all undone,
Do you love me, do you, surfer girl?

But when you hear them? Magic. The unremarkable becomes profound, elevated.

I have often thought of this aspect to early Beach Boys through the lens of irony or perhaps Wilson’s genius (or lack thereof with regard to lyrics…see “Vegetables”), but it occurs to me, just now while writing this newsletter, that there is a distinctly abstract quality to the divergence of form and content. (A comparison could be made to Jonathan Richman for whom the form and content are in direct alignment, i.e. sparse and simple words with sparse and simple arrangements. In this case the music’s power lies in his clear-eyed directness. More on Richman at a later date, I’m sure.) What does it mean that Brian Wilson takes the content of maybe the most fondly-inane musical genre of all time, Surf-Rock, and combines it with the form (and treats it with the seriousness) of some of the most harmonically complex genres, Close-Harmony Jazz (The Four Freshmen) and Bach? Here’s a thought: it means The Beach Boys take our silly problems seriously.

Those verse-vocals on Surfer girl, that lush, four-part harmony with a marching harmonic rhythm, is a sort of Bach chorale. But instead of:

For this is appeared the Son of God,
That he may destroy the works of the Devil.

We get:

Little surfer, little one,
Makes my heart come all undone,
Do you love me, do you, surfer girl?

This is not some sort of mindless pop song anymore, it’s the prayer of a devotee to something greater. It’s the yearning for a better life, a more complete existence. The vision of a future with…with a surfer girl. It’s dumb! But therein lies the true, enduring beauty. Because everyone has their own surfer girl, their own minor fantasies and infatuations. And Brian Wilson is here, putting his hand on your shoulder, and saying “it’s ok. It’s ok to be worked up over the dumb little things in life. I will take them seriously with you.”

Your mythic quests in life do not have to contain grand visions or vast plans. They don’t need death and victory and destruction and triumph. Just the fact of wanting something is enough for it to be taken seriously. And that’s the elemental magic of The Beach Boys.

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Any comments or questions, lmk. Would love to hear your thoughts or reactions! Am I right or am I wrong?

Austin