The Smiley Smile Message Board

Just heard the Adult Child version of Hey Little Tomboy: ''Ok, now shave your legs for the first time''. Oh. My. God.

How on earth is it that not a single member thought to say 'Er... hang on, isn't this massively inappropriate, even for 1978??'

This - even more than the disco remakes, the Baywatch apperances and Al's ponytail - is the king of all WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?? moments...

"Hey Little Tomboy," even without those lines, is a baffler. The fact that it was number two on MIU - surrounded by glossy, MOR songs nonetheless - is very strange. I don't know what the balls they were thinking.

For me, that is one of the many charms of this strange, beautiful, odd, genius, and sometimes misguided troupe of musicians. It is their utter humanity, their ability to produce howlers as embarrassing as their best work is superb. There is no master plan, no façade, no window-dressing.

Any other artist or group (think of all those punk people in the '70s) would do something like this only on purpose, to épater la bourgeousie, and/or to rake in money via a succes de scandale (pardon my French here).

Not so our boys. And it is one of the reasons I truly love them.

I'm with the Don. And anyway, what's wrong with a girl shaving her legs for the very first time? How's a girl gonna develop stubble if she don't shave her pins?

Amen. I couldn't have said it better.

There are quite a number of Brian's BB lyrics that have references to young girls that we would find inappropriate today. But as the Heartical D says, that's part of the charm!  ;D

Great topic title though btw!  ;D

Yes, who has heard the unreleased classic "Grass On The Pitch"?

You mean the Gillette Venus ad music that got refused for "reasons of morality"?

It's what Freud had in mind when he invented the Id.

"invented"?  :o

the concept of...

I suppose with Brian you can just put it down to naive innocence - however, when Dennis sings on Schoolgirl about picking up a youngster from school you know damn well what his intentions are, the filthy old stoat!

Brian did the schoolgirl pick-up topic with "Lazy Lizzie," though I don't think that song went beyond his own demo. 

I personally think it was an attempt at sabotage by Brian.  :3d

All Dressed Up for School

Lazy Lizzie makes Tomboy sound like the epitome of political correctness.

I never really understood what's so vehemently creepy about this one. Sure, if it had been on 15 Big Ones, eyebrows would definitely be raised, but you have to remember Carl was only 17 when he sung this and that it was commonplace for guys in their late-teens/early twenties to date girls in high school.

I sure would like to know the percentage of posters who never had and raised a daughter, who dislike the song, or otherwise just don't get it.

Please, please tell me that you haven't ever said to any daughter you've had "I'm going to teach you to kiss"... if that song is about a father/daughter relationship, it becomes roughly 10,000 times creepier than it already was (though still not as creepy as Lazy Lizzie).

I think you're defending it?  I'd say in the context of being about a daughter, it might be cute, but there's an overall pattern that makes it uncomfortable, and if it's not about a non-related underage girl, it's about taking an unhealthy prurient interest in his daughter's maturation (not to mention the kiss line, ick). I know I've read people defend "I Want To Pick You Up," saying it's a sweet song about a father wanting his child to stay small her whole life.  But if you've ever read the "Rolling Stone" interview from around that time, the song is about a guy who wants a really tiny grown-up girlfriend (and wants to be able to bottlefeed her and spank her).  Those songs added to "Lazy Lizzie" are a little unsettling.

or really, it's probably just brian writing songs as if he's still 19, which is very likely how he saw himself as he's writing them.
\Really I get so sick of people calling him to task for writing songs from a youthful perspective. That's where his head is/was at.
Of course if Brian told you personally that he was trying to write from the POV of a pervert, then I bow to your knowledge; but since he never did, you should all let it go.

This is an old topic, it's been brought up before, it's no big deal. i"m not sure why some people get so offended over things that are fair game to discuss.  It was in bad taste to write song lyrics about pubescent girls, which "Hey Little, Tomboy" and "Lazy Lizzie" are about, even from the perspective of a 19 year old.  Only one was officially released, but that means the other Beach Boys were guilty of allowing the song to be put on record. 

Older men who actually go after girls that age do so because they are stuck at an emotional teenage level as well. I'm not comparing Brian writing songs like that with a criminal act such as actually doing it, but still, it is objectionable and if anyone did that now, they would be pilloried and rightfully so. Brian wasn't and isn't perfect.

There's a Hall & Oates song called "I'm Just A Kid (Don't Make Me Feel Like A Man)" about this very pathology. The older guy tries to pick up an inappropriately younger girl  (she doesn't drive yet) and then when he's rejected, he plays it off like he was just fooling around.

Why was it in bad taste? Because you say so? I quite enjoy HLT, and find nothing at all distasteful about it.
The other BBs aren't "guilty" of anything except liking another song Brian wrote/recorded. If you dislike them so much, instead of talking about how wrong it is, just don't listen it to them.
 LL I have somewhere and I'd have to dig it out, but since I'm sure I'll like it too, I'll save it for some other day.

I Want To Pick You Up I can't take but Lazy Lizzie & Tomboy I can listen to and laugh. Sure they are sick but funny in a dark humor sort of way. I agree with you though, those songs are plain creepy.

Just because you like being a pederast, don't hold me or anyone to it. I'm sure you're on some registered list of offenders somewhere.

Would it have been better if he'd sung: "Always get it up for the touch of the younger kind"? Because a year after the MIU Album, that sh*t got to number one.

Dressed Up For School i'd say doesn't count because at that point they were all still so young (as has already been pointed out Carl was only 17).

Lazy Lizzie - isn't that the one that 'borrows' the riff from Mount Vernon & Fairway (it's the 'piped piper, i hope i'll see you again' melody)? I've not heard Brian's version (though would very much like too! hint, hint), i've only heard some guy on youtube doing a cover version on his keyboard (take a look, he really goes for it!!).

Utter humanity does sum lots of this discussion up.  You know in an academic context that growth is sometimes measured on a linear continuum, but, really it is a measure of peaks and plateaus.  There are spikes and sometimes dips on a graph but this song merits analysis as an "awakening" of sorts in a young lady.  It may be regarded in an over simplistic fashion.  It is not. 

From a woman's standpoint, it may take on a different connotation.  It is a shifting of ages in human growth and development.  Looking at a girl in a different light.  If I had to draw an analogy, I would liken it to the transformation of the young "Meggie" in the Thorn Birds, to the first dance, "Meggie-a little grown up." It is shifting the dynamic.  It is the precipice of womanhood. 

The work is more or less "transparent" and your French analogy is right on point.  Je crois.  ;)   

There are some creepy people on this board...

It would first,  be interesting to put the lyrics in front of a Womens' Writer's course (I have taken many courses) and they might go line by line and compare a dynamic women's images in each decade since the Womens' movement, ability of the right to vote, the evolution of women's roles in politics, medicine, law and education.  A Womens' Studies class would have a" field day" with the discussion of this song, in the study of the lyrics, and probably come away saying, "Ya, but it is still a cute song." And it does capture a certain generation.  

Only that I have taken many such courses post grad, can I say that this whole concept is very much on the academic menu.  It depends on how old you are.  If you were raised in the 50's and 60's and spent time in college in the 70's, you can see the whole progression.  

And, second, if you put the first several LP's of the Beach Boys,  as compared with the structure and then the more sophisticated arrangement of Hey Little Tomboy in front of a basic music class, they might discover the early 60's rock chord structure under the upgraded arrangement and addition of more instrumention.  

Even as a quasi-feminist, it is possible to take a gentler and less critical view of this song and accept what more defined roles were, and not get all huffy about it.  It was what it was.  Is it today?  Probably not.  I still find it a very cute song.  Music is often a reflection of society.  60's and 70's anti-war music.  Serious with a purpose, or Hey Little Tomboy, more light-hearted boy-girl stuff.   

My opinion.  Strong, but I feel it is supportable with facts, both from a sociolgical and literary viewpoint, from those decades.   ;)




    

It's perverted. 

That is your take. 

And, that is fine.   

Chacun à son goût...each to his/her own taste.

Tolerance without attacking one another is important...   

 

I'm sure that song is misinterpreted. IMHO it's about a father who is astonished about his little kid growing fast. In his mind it's still a baby, when in fact it is a child that is already much more independent than a baby.

I know Brian once said something different, but I'm very much at ease believing that was a put-on. ::)

"I Want To Pick You Up" is totally innocent. Folks take one line and run with it - I somehow don't think Brian Wilson, even at his craziest, would write and submit a song about pervertedly touching his daughter's ass.

I think "Hey Little Tomboy" was meant to be innocent, but the end results are hilariously inappropriate and indeed a tad creepy considering his age at the time. Just the same, there's an interview well before it came out where Brian merely describes it as a song about a tomboy getting into girly things. Like, I somehow don't think Brian, again at his craziest, would think it appropriate to take a tomboy aside and show her how to be a girl/how to kiss.

"Lazy Lizzie"... welp, there's a reason that one didn't see the light of day :'(

I will say that Brian wrote a lot of "character" songs, even before that era. He didn't go roller skating ("Roller Skating Child"), he didn't surf (where to begin?), he didn't seem to be the type to attend beach parties ("It's OK"),  he didn't bust his ass at a family farm in Ohio ("Back Home"), he didn't date whimsical fortune teller types ("Funky Pretty"), and obviously, from what we know, never tried to convince a tomboy to be more like a girl. To him, I'm guessing it was just trying to find things or situations to write about.

Voice of reason.

I meant more because the vocals are bad, the lyrics are inane, the melody is annoying etc.

I Wanna Pick You Up is among my favorite Beach Boys songs. Alex Chilton's cover of the song is extremely wonderful as well.

Common decency would agree with you, and so would I... or at least I want to, desperately... but there is that story about the dildo that Jack Rieley so famously told...

I'm not sure if this link has yet been shared, and granted, 15 is not 13, but http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/lynne-truss/9241268/Lynne-Truss-The-Beach-Boys-and-me.html

What a story. I wonder if she would have gone if Dennis asked?

Erm, pardon? Or do I even want to know? :|

What does the dildo story have to do with IWPYU? I thought it was Marcella.

God I'm just so out of touch. I like the songs for what they are on the surface. Nothing thrills me more than turning the music up and washing my 66 Coupe.

What was the Jack Riely dildo story?

I wish I hadn't brought this up now. The gist is that Brian was in a room with Rieley and Carnie holding a dildo and he says a few strange things (as quoted by Rieley, mind). Not too much beyond that but it was unsettling. Again, I wish I hadn't brought it up.

Far from answering my question that's simply made me more curious!! Anyone wanna actually tell the story for those of us who find vague non-answers annoying?

I'm curious now, as well.

Most of this stuff was revealed in an internet discussion Jack was a part of in, I think, '96. Apparently, Brian in '72 bought a dildo and shoved it down his pants because he worried that Marcella would think his dick was "too tiny". If I recall correctly, Rieley then spoke of a second story where he, Carnie and Brian were in the same room and Brian was showing Carnie the dildo and saying shocking things like "I'm not your father" to her.  :-\ Jack was understandably appalled and ended up sending Carnie outside away from her father.

It's a pretty horrific story, but we must remember that Jack is a pretty sensationalist guy (he had a fabricated CV when he joined The Beach Boys), admitted to being pretty drugged up when he managed the guys, and that the events in question were being recalled over 20 years after they had taken place (more than enough time for details to get eroded/reshaped).