Good To My Baby

To these ears, "Good To My Baby" is an overlooked gem in the Beach Boys catalog.  The band themselves passed it up for both of their career spanning box sets: Good Vibrations: 30 Years of the Beach Boys (1993) and Made in California (2013). 

Originally released on The Beach Boys Today! (1965), the song just exudes joy.  The bootleg Unsurpassed Masters Vol. 8 lets us hear Brian conducting his Wrecking Crew studio musicians (plus Carl on guitar) through a killer guitar-driven backing track that took 19 takes to complete in an awfully quick session on January 13, 1965.  In 2001 they finally showed the backing track some love by releasing it on Hawthorne, CA, a collection of rarities and alternate mixes.  They used the slate for take 17, but take 19 is what we get. This YouTube video uses that audio with a nice montage of pictures of some of those great session musicians.

"Good To My Baby" was originally credited to Brian Wilson alone, but Mike Love said he wrote the lyrics.  He sued Brian in 1992 to have his name added to a number of song credits and receive lost royalties.  This is one of the 35 songs to which a Mike Love composer credit was added.  The wonderful vocal arrangement was recorded on January 19, 1965.  Brian takes the first half of each verse and Mike handles the rest.  Carl, Al, and Dennis join in on the background harmonies.  Brian's voice is strong, confident and unmatched.

The lyrics in the verses aren't magnificent, but they do the job.  The words are a bit teeny-bopper compared to the melancholy on side two.  Mike didn't give himself the greatest lines, for example: "And when I give her my love it's between her and me."  The gold is in the chorus: "She's my girl and I'm good to my baby, she's my girl and I'm good to my baby, and I know she's happy with me."

This is one example where listening to the session tapes helped my appreciation of the song.  A lot of the production subtleties get buried in the original mono mixes and there are revelations to be had all over the place.  Imagine standing in that studio and hearing those guitars, pianos, organ, drums, congas, bass, tambourine, and saxophones.  For some reason I get a kick out of that saxophone that comes in the left channel at 1:56.  I never would have noticed that without the stereo mix and session tapes. It's just a great production all-around that is possibly overlooked because it's on an album full of great productions.

The Beach Boys on Sub Pop

This may be the first time I've ever used the term "double take," but that's exactly what I did when I came across this item.  In my first post I talked about being a fan of Nirvana and early 90s "alternative" music, so seeing a Beach Boys single on Sub Pop is plain awesome and a must-have collectible.

Clark Staub used to work for a Sub Pop distributor, but in 1996 he was the senior director of sales for Capitol Records. He approached Dave Rosencrans at Sub Pop and asked if they would be interested in doing a promotional single for the upcoming Pet Sounds Sessions box set slated for that May.  The labels' co-owner, Jonathan Poneman, said they purposely made it look like their original Singles Club singles with the black bar at the top.  "Part of the whole thing is that it's just cool, and its coolness should be evident to those who are Beach Boys aficionados," he said.

The box set was pulled at the last minute and delayed a year and a half.  There was talk that Mike Love wasn't happy with some of the liner notes and essays included.  Author Timothy White said the band had "misgivings about how Capitol envisioned it."  In the 18-months that followed, the 7" became a real hot item.  This release and a CD sampler of the box set became the only ways to get this material.  The record contains 3 tracks: "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" (stereo mix), "Wouldn't It Be Nice" (vocals only) and "Here Today" (stereo backing track). 

The Pet Sounds Sessions finally came out in November 1997 and the value of this 7" and the CD sampler plummeted.  It's still a cool little item, however, and obviously contains great music.  Jonathan Poneman said, "We don't anticipate, at this late date, converting people to Beach Boys fandom, and even if we did, they're signed to another label."  You can't blame him too much for not predicting the incredible impact the box would have.  Reissues don't usually completely change the way an artist is viewed, but this box, carrying the endorsements of nearly everyone who ever recorded a song, changed how a generation saw the Beach Boys.  It was the beginning of what I think had to be one of the best times ever to be a Beach Boys fan.

Becoming a Fan - Part 1

I never thought I would be a Beach Boys fan. I was big into the Beatles and Monkees from an early age, but the Beach Boys were never on my radar. When I was a teenager, the songs just seemed corny and simplistic. Of course, I wasn’t paying close attention. In the early 90s I got into Nirvana and that whole “alternative rock” scene. It was all about not selling out, a supposed sincerity, and being true to yourself; not your school. My main experience with the Beach Boys was “Kokomo” and appearances on Full House. Those shows are awkward. Our guys had some short shorts, Hawaiian shirts, pony tails, and baseball caps with their own band name on it. Band member Bruce Johnston once said, “On the ‘I wanna be cool level,’ how could you possibly connect the Beach Boys with that?”

I kept comparing them to the Beatles, who seemed to have much more control over their presentation. They didn’t change the words to their songs to be in commercials. They didn’t repackage their music to death. They didn’t wear striped shirts and tie themselves to things such as surfing and cars. They didn’t hang out with John Stamos. It seemed the Beach Boys had no shame and nothing was too cheesy to cash in on. I was judging a book by its cover and it wasn’t fair. Most artists I love from the 60s had a rough 80s (and sometimes 90s) and most of them didn’t have a Brian Epstein to keep them in check. We don’t know how some bands would have carried themselves when they were older had they never broken up. What does that have to do with the music anyways?

Elvis Presley is another one I didn’t have much respect for back then. That was mainly because he didn’t write any songs. I didn’t see how someone who just sang other people’s work could be all that important. I still struggle with that today with those singing competitions on TV where, in my opinion, everyone sounds somewhat similar as they work to put as much emotion into the songs as possible. I bring this up because I saw Andy Kaufmann do an impression of Elvis where he sang “I Beg of You.” I really enjoyed the song. I went to my parents record collection to see if they had it and found it on a four-album set called Worldwide 50 Gold Award Hits, Vol. 1. When listening to the songs one after another, I was very impressed. It was the first time I was truly listening to these songs as opposed to just hearing them in the background or on the radio. This would happen to me again with the Beach Boys and many other acts I originally dismissed for ignorant or superficial reasons.

Something was happening when my senior year of high school started in the fall of 1997. Suddenly the Beach Boys were being talked about everywhere. VH-1 ran a special on this album called Pet Sounds which was supposedly the greatest thing ever made. They were being spoken of in the most glowing terms possible by people like Paul McCartney, Elton John, Tom Petty, and Lindsey Buckingham. Their leader, Brian Wilson, who was pretty much MIA for a couple decades, was apparently this incredible genius. Are we talking about the same band here? Surfing songs? School spirit? If they were so great, what happened to them? What happened to Brian? I took to the Internet. I somehow found a guy who appreciated my interest and told me he’d send me a cassette of Pet Sounds. He thought I should hear the new stereo mix that was just released on a box set dedicated to the making of the album.

I don’t remember the guy's name, but he sent me the most important cassette I ever got. It was Thanksgiving break, so November 1997, and we were about to drive to Buffalo, NY for my cousin's wedding. I put the tape in, hit play, and laid on my bed. The bouncing guitars of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” was followed by the bang of Hal Blaine’s drum. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older, then we wouldn’t have to wait so long / And wouldn’t it be nice to live together in the kind of world where we belong.” I jumped off the bed and stood there. I was beaming. As they were singing those lines, these accordions were blasting away and this awesome bass line played by Carol Kaye was demanding your attention. Then those classic Beach Boys harmonies kick in. It was sensory overload. This was one of the greatest things I’ve ever heard.

The five-hour drive through Canada to Buffalo found me in the back of my parents van, with my Walkman, playing this album over and over. British writer, Nik Cohn, said the album consisted of “sad songs about loneliness and heartache. Sad songs, even, about happiness.” I don’t think I ever really thought of it that way at the time. The music was so interesting and the lyrics by Brian and Tony Asher were insightful and relatable. Those vocals at the end of “You Still Believe In Me.” That theremin in “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times.” The instrumental section of “Here Today.” The round of voices at the end of “God Only Knows.” This is the same Beach Boys, right? That Brian Wilson guy thought this up?

The guy who made me the cassette didn’t just give me the 13-track album; he included some of the sessions from the box set too. I was listening to Brian conduct the musicians through “Sloop John B” and other songs, as well as hearing the backing tracks sans vocals. That alone gave me a whole new appreciation for the work and passion that went into the creation of these songs. Brian taught me to listen more closely to music, especially what was going on underneath the vocals. I went back and started digging into the Beatles catalog and all the music I thought I knew. I was hearing things I never noticed before. Very exciting things. I can’t describe them technically, but you know how they make you feel. It was like everything was new and there was so much to explore. Brian once said, “When you listen to Pet Sounds, use earphones in the dark and you can hear everything.” That is much easier to do with the clarity of the wonderful stereo mix. I started listening to music with headphones all the time and it opened up a new world; making you feel closer to these great creations in more ways than one.

This wraps up part one of my story of becoming a Beach Boys fan.

I will write part two at some point in the near future, but I want to get to some other posts first.