The Smiley Smile Message Board

no joke, it always seemed to me to be about a low-level street gang.

"my buddies and me are getting real well known, the bad guys know us and they leave us alone", you know?

They're a bunch of d-bags, but at least they have the decency to not go steady. :-D

Dada explained it:


http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,12311.0.html

No. The bad guys were the hoods. The I Get Around guys wore loafers, had cars, were in a band and were probably popular around campus. They might have cruised the boulevard, hung out at the bowling alley and got drunk before games.

back in the days the idea of making car songs had to adress the culture surrounding good cars. imagine what 'Grease' set out to portray, then put it in LA and you have what IGA is about.

I always thought 'the bad guys know us and they leave us alone' was just 'bad guys don't pick on us'. Probably because, IDK, Mike Love throws a decent curve ball or whatever, not because he's handy with a woodchipper  :lol

The girls verse always confused me a little. 'I am always going to f*** anything on a saturday night so I probably shouldn't get a girlfriend'? So you think you're a playa, huh, Mike?

It's such a punk-rock kind of song. I love it. I mean, this is as close as the Beach Boys get to punk-rock.

I always thought "I'm a real cool head, making real good bread" was a reference to smoking pot and affording it, being a rock star.

see, to me that line is like doing smalltime jobs and getting paid well from them. I'm not trying to be funny and bring up the whole vintagemusic mob connections thing again.

but that's seriously what this song seems to be about to me.

Didn't you guys ever go 'crusin on Sat night? In HS I had a 63 Split Window Coupe. It was small town Indiana and the Bad guys were other street racers that thought they were "Bad" and they left me (us) alone. You didn't choose guys to race if you knew they were faster than you. Mine was pretty quick but I never wanted to run against a couple of  guys I knew. No ulterior motives in the song, it was just the 60's.

yeah, I guess my line of thinking is pretty absurd. my car in high school was a 2003 Chrysler PT Cruiser (automatic transmission) and not once did I get into a race with it.

I'm not sure what it meant in 1964, but a Head was someone who took drugs. At least it was in the late 60s and 70s.

Was there ever mention/discussion of the band referencing drugs in '64? Any sort of controversy?

braggadocio at its finest. as boastful as any rap music, and the backing track does have a garage/punk edge to it.

it's an ode to cruising, which leaves no room for steady girlfriends by definition. it's the Our Car Club posse in effect.

the bad guys were the gang member types but they respected the cleaner cut IGA guys and left them alone.

The "real cool head" line is interesting. Funny too that it's Brian's part. It's possible that Brian snuck that line in and Mike didn't quite get the meaning. Then again, Brian used the line "blew his mind" in I'm Bugged At My Old Man and I don't think he was talking about drugs.

It's about bakin' real good bread. What else?

Even if there is a harpsichord on it...

Not that he was talking about drugs, but just using a hip, drug expression.

He knew how to speak "hip."

Pretty sure I saw an interview with Brian at some point where he said he "I felt naked to the world when I wrote I Get Around".  Something about baring his soul in that song.  

After seeing that interview, I always interpreted the lyrics "bugged drivin' up and down the same old strip" to be Brian tiring of the surf and car songs, "' find a new place where the kids are hip" to be him longing to write the Pet Sounds/Smile type of music.  "My buddies and me gettin real well known" to be describe the high profile the band was achieving and "the bad guys know us and they leave us alone" to be the other big bands of the time giving some respect to the BB.  etc etc...

Actually makes a lot of sense after hearing Bri's comments....

I Get Around is like a rite of passage that everyone goes through in life. That feeling of being completely untouchable. Of course you don't necessarily outright believe it, but you still think it's true.

And besides, what's not to love about the song? The OGs Michael Love and Brian Wilson on the leads, the insistent backing track, the amazing backing vocals, the incredible lyrics (YES, those lyrics are incredible)...it's a great fucking record. It's a fucking classic. Deal with it.

Believe it or not, in the early 60's in rural Indiana, we didn't even know about drugs. I went to the Air Force Academy and they showed us a film about some guy on pot working on an airplane and I was amazed. It was something I had never seen. Don't worry, I made up for it when I moved to San Diego.

And a real cool head was just a guy you looked up to. Somebody who knew his way around. It was a simpler time.

Drug dealing. Duh ;)

i dig the double meaning. intentional or not.

But then again, weren't those lyrics written by Mike?

Would you care to describe the video of the guy working on the airplane? That sounds amazing. You don't think it would be available to watch online anywhere, do you?

I don't think it's actually been said. All we know is Mike wrote the "Round round, get around" bit.

Is there a band whose writing credits are as shrouded in mystery as the Beach Boys? The lawsuits, Charles Manson types, uncredited writing etc. etc. etc. only made it worse. It's always interesting to know who came up with what in songs, and I feel like I know a fair amount about the subject with other bands, but almost never with the Beach Boys.

I used to think when I first heard the song in 2003 that they were one badass group of motherfu*kers! Bear in mind I was about 9 at the time, I also imagined they were a bunch of young muscley stereotypical jock-types before I knew what they looked like! :lol

(http://resources0.news.com.au/images/2011/11/23/1226203/748168-the-beach-boys.jpg)

"We're gonna f*** you up like a Gosh Darn accident."

 :lol

One thing hasn't changed, I still think Mike Love is a motherf*ckin badass. ;D

Michael is the OG, baby. Hawthorne represent!

This is Brian's first reference to being 'bugged'.  He had to find a new place to hide because his room was bugged. So he hid in his car only to find that Phil Spector had bugged his car, thus being 'bugged' driving up and down the same old strip. He and his buddies were real well known by Phil Spector (the bad guys) because he knew everything Brian was doing. The best girls stayed home on Saturday night listening to Spector records. During the making of this record, Brian discoverd that Murray conspired with Spector by planting the bugs for a sum of money. Thus Brian fired his dad as manager.

from wiki:

Mike Love filed a lawsuit against Brian Wilson claiming that he had not been given credit, and therefore had not received royalties, on over thirty of the band's songs, many of them hit singles.[3] One of these songs was "I Get Around". The original credit only credited Wilson, but Love insisted that he had a hand in writing the lyrics. In an interview with Goldmine, published September 18, 1992, Love insisted that he and not Wilson "came up with 'round round get around'". Mike Love won the lawsuit and the song-writing credit was amended, therefore ensuring future royalties on all of the songs that he had claimed he had a hand in writing

It's like punk rock, if punk rock was made by the popular jocks/preps in high school. It's an AWESOME song without a trace of bullshit in the lyrics.  It's about being in the prime of your life, knowing it and rocking it while at the same time denying the fact that someday you will be a fat drug addicted slob like everybody else. It is fucking timeless. The intro sounds like doo-wop from the future and the end of the song sound to me like nothing less than history being fucking made.

He came up with that round round get around, but he also said that Brian wrote the chorus lyrics and he wrote most of the verse lyrics.

He's Mike Love, thus I just assume he's outright lying about that.

It isn't about anything. It's a pop song. Its just Brian Wilson trying out a funky arrangement.

I agree with jamsvet. It is all about car culture and swagger.

Is there a band whose writing credits are as shrouded in mystery as the Beach Boys?

Bon Jovi!

No, seriously, Bon Jovi! For many years Mr. Bongovi was touchy about the role of Desmond Child in his biggest hits, mainly bc Desmond Child is (or at least was in the late 80s and early 90s) regarded as a dial-a-hit collaborator. I think JBJ is cooler with it now since his own rep seems accepted, but back when his authenticity was in question, he insisted Child had little to do with his signature hits but that the record company insisted he "edit" JBJ and Sambora.

And let's not even get into the mystery of 1950s writing credits, especially Morris Levy. Here's from wiki on "Why Do fools Fall in Love?"


Although early vinyl single releases of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" credit Frankie Lymon, Herman Santiago, and George Goldner as co-writers of the song, later releases and cover versions were attributed only to Lymon and record producer George Goldner. Goldner's name was later replaced by Morris Levy when Levy bought Goldner's interest in Gee Records, the Teenagers' record company.

After a lengthy court battle, song-writing credits were awarded to original Teenagers members Herman Santiago and Jimmy Merchant in December 1992.[5]

However, four years later in 1996, this ruling was overturned by the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit under the statute of limitations and authorship, because Santiago and Merchant did not bring the case to court soon enough. This gave the song rights back to Lymon and Levy.[5] The current publisher of the song is EMI Music Publishing, which still lists these as the songwriters.[


So I don't think the mystery of Beach Boys writing credits is necessarily unique---it just stands out more bc of Brian's rep as an auteur.

Nobody's mentioned the Rich Sloan yearbook signed by Brian circa '59?  I thought you all were on top of this.  Brian calls Rich a "cool head/drafty toilet", so it's obviously a teenage expression of his.

It's about exactly what it sounds like it's about, being cool. They've got bread, babes, cars, freedom, the things that appeal to most young people.

This song is a brilliant gem. It is fantastic on every level. I would argue that it even supports the notion of Brian being a genius. The way the music is layered with the unbelievable vocals/harmonies is mind blowing to me. Brian's falsetto and Mikes deep base become a musical instrument themselves. It's one of the best examples combining vocals and music to create a whole that I can think of. It also happens to be the song that hooked me into lifelong love of the BB's.