“Good Vibrations” (Smiley Smile, 1967)
Brian’s final, intricately compiled teenage symphony to God
Mike Love: “I wrote the phrases, I got here up with ‘I’m choosing up good vibrations, she’s giving me the excitations’. I wrote the phrases on the way in which to the studio, I handed them to Brian, he handed them to Carl and Carl did an incredible job singing it. It’s most likely essentially the most avant garde track of its time from our perspective. I used to be simply attempting to put in writing lyrics that will resonate with the occasions and the mentality of what was occurring at that interval of the ‘60s. There was peace and love and flower energy and every kind of anti-war sentiments and immigration points, however from my perspective I wrote a few woman who was all about peace and love, that’s how I approached the writing of it. There’s quite a lot of love and positivity in that document. I contemplate that to be one of many biggest.”
“Tears In The Morning” (Sunflower, 1970)
Stirring heartbreaker courtesy of Bruce
Bruce Johnston: “I had a girlfriend that broke up with me, so I let my thoughts run away with itself. It’s a waltz, like “Disney Ladies…”. Mike calls me the Waltz King. It was by no means alleged to be a single, the one nation it was successful in was Holland.”
“California Ladies” (Summer season Days (And Summer season Nights!!), 1965)
Harmonic hymn to west coast girls
Mike Love: “I wrote each syllable of “California Ladies”. Brian was within the studio with The Wrecking Crew, a few of the biggest musicians in LA, and I stepped out within the hallway and wrote the phrases because the observe was being recorded by the musicians. That was an excellent one, a really spontaneous one.”
“Assist Me, Rhonda” (Summer season Days (And Summer season Nights!!), 1965)
Rebound pop a-go-go
Mike Love: “It was influenced by a few of the vernacular that I skilled in highschool – some individuals would say ‘I’m gonna do you in’. Properly, ‘since she put me down I’ve been out doing in my head’. Which means maybe you had been consuming an excessive amount of, I don’t know.”
“Susie Cincinnati” (Sunflower, 1970)
Cheery driving tune a few cab driver in Ohio
Al Jardine: ““Susie Cincinnati” is form of a jab at The Beatles, a “Drive My Automotive” form of factor, I loved that. There wasn’t a lot a rivalry with The Beatles, extra of an appreciation. With Brian it may need been competitors however myself, I loved their work rather a lot. It pushed Brian into working tougher. Rubber Soul was his inspiration to get critical.”
“Disney Ladies (1957)” (Surf’s Up, 1971)
Time-jumping magnificence, on being “rediscovered”
Bruce Johnston: “I’d been penning this track I believed it was kinda unhappy however I used to be having the best life, I used to be browsing, I stayed away from medication and alcohol, I’d come dwelling and simply log on and write songs and I realised as we slip into 1970-ish, after we had been re-discovered, that we had been hip and funky once more due to enjoying Carnegie Corridor. We got here again and all of a sudden the Seashore Boys had been so hip and funky that folks in highschool, all these precocious New York guys and women determined ‘hey, we’ll go and see The Seashore Boys, and we’ll present them we will smoke weed, how cool!’ I believed to myself as I watched it, how not cool. I believed I ought to hold the track that I began however make it a cheerful track like Again To The Future, so I wrote about what it was like for me at their age, 15, 16, 17. I time travelled again in that track.”
“Don’t Go Close to The Water” (Surf’s Up, 1971)
Surfer heroes ominously advise towards swimming, on ecological grounds
Al Jardine: “We had been written up in Time journal, which is a giant deal right here within the States, for our lyrics on that individual track as a result of at the moment they had been having bother with phosphates, not good for the water. After that they eliminated phosphates from quite a lot of detergents, so I suppose we had some influence.”
“All That Is That” (Carl And The Passions, 1972)
Dreamy, poetic meditation on gliding into “the pool of peace inside”
Al Jardine: “It’s a track based mostly on transcendental meditation, which is one in every of my favourites. It’s additionally impressed by a Robert Frost poem known as A Street Not Taken. Mike instructed we write a track about TM, so I kinda mixed the 2 concepts collectively. It got here out fairly nicely, and we additionally remixed and reorganised it for an album popping out later this yr, a field set that has quite a lot of materials from that interval – ’72, ’73, ’71. I feel you’ll get a kick out of it – it reveals the evolution of writing the track… TM actually helped me open up slightly bit. I’m not an actual lyrical particular person so it gave me some concepts for a deeper sense of songwriting and a lyrical route.”
“California Saga” (Holland, 1973)
Broad-reaching tour of the sunshine state and all its mythologies
Al Jardine: “That’s a biopic of central California. It’s recollective of all of the surroundings, it’s extra like slightly travelogue. Most of our music is centred round Southern California, women and vehicles, I used to be impressed by the journey that we took, that I did after I left LA, determined to get out of the town and get some nation air, y’know? It’s descriptive and charming and Mike wrote a track known as “Huge Sur” which I linked all these issues collectively for an album known as Holland. I put that along with some actually deep poetry, the poetic hyperlink between the 2 songs, I linked it collectively right into a trilogy known as ‘The California Saga’.”
“Kokomo” (Nonetheless Cruisin’, 1988)
A conga via the tropics
Mike Love: “We had been requested to do a track for a film, Cocktail, Tom Cruise was in that film, and that track was primary for eight weeks in Australia. That’s a very long time to be primary. They requested us to do the track as a result of within the film Tom Cruise was going from New York to Jamaica and so we simply wrote the track and the director of the movie heard it and mentioned ‘that is the most important hit that you just’ve had since “Good Vibrations”’. We had no body of reference on it, we had been simply writing by task to the film. The track is written by John Phillips, who got here up with the melody of the verse, I modified the primary verse only a tiny bit, the second verse and slightly little bit of a half verse on the finish. Terry Melcher, the producer, he did that “I wanna take you right down to Kokomo” half that Carl sang, however I sang the lead. It was a real collaboration. It was very nice to see one in every of your efforts go to primary so a few years after you began.”
