The Smiley Smile Message Board

I have read a few comments about some of the Beach Boys "inappropriate" lyrics or "grown men singing about being in school chasing girls" and such.

I agree that if you know the ages of the guys singing, it can be weird. But is it possible that the songs are/were written in a manner where the listener is supposed to assume an age-appropriate relationship or desire? Or that the writer is reminiscing a bit?

It is only the listener that adds the creepiness factor to some songs by assuming the song is about old guys chasing young girls. People like the girl/boy songs. Older songwriters music - if written with an age appropriate pen - would probably be lost on the younger generation. By singing "young" it enables the listener to relate if they are in the younger age bracket, or if they are older, they will remember the way it felt to be chasing girls rather than worrying about getting enough fiber in their diet.

Music is an escape and the writer can be anyone he/she wants. We are the ones projecting age-inappropriate thoughts.

That's one way of looking at it, and certainly I don't think the potentially weird/creepy lyrics the band sang had any nefarious motives behind them.

But I think it's ridiculous to say that it's *all" on a fan or listener for thinking, say, "Hey Little Tomboy" or "Lazy Lizzie" are creepy and arguably inappropriate. I think even most fans who might find the songs kind of objectively creepy ultimately cut the band and Brian some slack because we know how he was writing those songs from a place of almost stunning obliviousness as to how someone might find them weird.

But it's actually more the band's *performance* of songs that aren't necessarily age-appropriate that, in my mind, is more open to criticism than the writing of those songs (in the sense that they could have given the songs to age-appropriate artists to sing, in theory in anyway). In the case of songs actually written *during* their youth, there's certainly a lot more leeway and understanding for why they wrote them that way then and even, arguably, why they continued to perform them into their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, etc.

But when the BBs were around the age of 40 writing songs like "Lazy Lizzie", I don't think it's just a reflection of a listener's mind to point out how objectively it's creepy. I think the writer is open to criticism, especially from a simple "music criticism" point of view. Nobody is saying the cops should have broken down Brian's door and questioned him about the song or anything. It's simply a matter of "Um, yeah, that's a little weird. Devoted and scholarly fans will tend to understand Brian's level of obliviousness in writing from a teenager point of view, but can also note how objectively and perhaps even to some of our own individual tastes, some songs are weird and not always easy to listen to."

Back to one of the original questions posed above, I certainly HOPE the point of writing songs from a teen point of view when they were in their late 30s or early 40s (or later) was that we're supposed to assume the singer/speaker is of the correct age. I have to assume Mike nor Brian were suggesting their 37-year-old selves were going to teach the little tomboy "to ki-hi-hisssss" or that they were going to show her how to "feel just like thi-hi-hissss." I would assume and hope Brian at age 34/35 was projecting back to being a teenager and not assuming listeners should picture a 34-year-old Brian Wilson following Lizzie as she was walking home from school.

I think there are cases where lyrics are ambiguous enough and not obviously inappropriate where maybe we are indeed seeing more the psyche of the person analyzing the lyrics. "A boy bumped into her wonderful", or even the apparent now-antiquated meaning of "making love" as described in that other thread, might fall into this category. But especially with something like "making love", I think that's more simply a case of a lot of people not being familiar with the etymology or history of that term.

Other things, like the aforementioned "Hey Little Tomboy" or "Lazy Lizzie", do not. And yes, I do know those are two of the more extreme examples.

Yup, seems pretty innocent to me  ;D

https://youtu.be/tfLDXv9cdWU?t=20m46s (https://youtu.be/tfLDXv9cdWU?t=20m46s)

"I'd Like To Pick You Up..." is this a revelation that "I Wanna Pick You Up" from Love You is indeed more dirty-minded than some think? Perhaps we'll never know...

In all honesty, the only song in the BB catalog that I would label as creepy is Summer of Love.  The way Mike sings the verses sound to me like a guy who's not allowed to give out Halloween candy. 

Hey Little Tomboy is creepy no matter what the age of the protagonist. Lazy Lizzy is only not creepy and stalkerly if you imagine Lizzy and the protagonist are good friends or family, which is a stretch of a read.

Emily - Boomers (and those generations earlier) would often refer to a girl who would climb a tree (generally reserved for the "boys") as "tom boys."  It has more to do with athleticism in girls and women which was not accepted as widely as today.  It was almost a term of endearment, back then, even if it is not considered in that way now.  One would overhear aunts, uncles, even grandparents lamenting that a girl would be doing what the boys were doing, and should go "put on a dress" and be a "young lady" rather than engage in what was perceived as "boys only" activities. They would have preferred that girls stayed in and played with their Barbie dolls.

It was, in my view a prefiguration, in the literary sense of girls breaking the glass ceiling in sports (and other areas)  and the basis for Title 9, in the school/academic context in the US to provide girls equal opportunity in athletics.

"Tomboys" have more to do with a breaking with sex stereotype than a "mind in the gutter" connotation.  It reminds me of Brian's "The Waltz" (also authored by Van Dyke Parks) which is also a throwback concept of "girls in their angora sweaters" - which someone from the 50's or early 60's would readily understand.  I get that younger people would find it creepy but support that Brian was coming from a very innocent place.  That is not to say that the sexual innuendo thing was not present in some of the music.  It was.  But, these two Brian songs are very innocent.  There is an interview on Youtube where Brian discusses the genesis of the song.

Too bad the boys had "to wait for the girls to grow up and put on a dress" - in the meantime, they could enjoy the company of young ladies who had manifest a level of athleticism, which was less accepted as an acceptable concept for girls.  

Girls were breaking athletic stereotypical barriers, climbing trees and playing baseball.   ;)

Yeah. I knew all that. Thanks. None-the-less, a song about sexual interest in a not-yet-matured girl and coaching her in how to sexualize herself is creepy, no matter how you cut it.

The potential sexism or gender stereotyping found in a song like "Hey Little Tomboy" is one thing, and some could argue we could cut them some slack for the song being 40 years old (some would argue we shouldn't of course).

But I think, as Emily pointed out, the issue with something like "Hey Little Tomboy" (and "Lazy Lizzie") is *age*, not gender stereotypes.

I think most of us would agree (hopefully) that Mike and Brian (as singers and/or writers) were projecting back to being of the appropriate age. But there's still something unsettling about a guy in his late 30s singing those lyrics. However innocent or oblivious the guys were, it had the appearance of utter creepiness.

That "Hey Little Tomboy" (especially in its unreleased iteration with spoken word interlude that gets even creepier and more offensive) exhibits both sexism/gender stereotyping *and* a weird lewd vibe by virtue of the age of the subject versus the vocalist (and arguably the writers as well) just makes that particular one worse.

I have to imagine the compilers of "MIU Album" (Al being one; though someone can correct me if he had nothing to do with resurrecting "Hey Little Tomboy" from the vaults for that album) just really liked the melody and music on "Hey Little Tomboy", and at least had the sense to remove the spoken word bit. But yeah, the song is still weird. Seriously, in both humorous and serious contexts, I've played these songs to non-fans and they uniformly think the mere existence of these two songs is unbelievable. At least I can tell them they left "Lazy Lizzie" in the vaults. That one would be arguably pretty creepy even if the writer was a teenager.

Thankfully, neither of these songs has the musical wonderment of something like "This Whole World", so if we need a weird offbeat late 70s Brian vibe, we can go to more innocuous stuff like "Johnny Carson" or "Solar System" or "We Gotta Groove."

Emily - if you listen to Brian in his interview, it might be difficult to arrive at that conclusion.  The guy is on "the sidelines" - and at equal ages, boys would look at athletic girls as "tomboys." And, no, you don't "know all that," if you didn't hear it firsthand, in it's innocent context.  Think of Norman Rockwell.  It is that kind of connotation. 

   

I do 'know all that' as I was frequently called a 'tomboy' when I was young. I don't object to calling someone a Tomboy. I object to the *guy* (no matter his age) training the *girl* how to sexualize herself. It's gross.

Emily - if you were called a tomboy - it may have been a recogntion (even an outdated one) that you had a certain parity alongside the boys. 

Even Queen Elizabeth worked on trucks during World War II.  It was a recognition of parity.  Did that make her a tomboy or a greasemoney?  And, I'm not thinking that Brian had an evil sexualization or objectification thing going on and did not get that from that interview. 

It was more like waiting for the girl to read Seventeen Magazine, for the latest fashion and makeup tips, rather than Sport Illustrated or swapping Beatlles cards instead of baseball cards.  It was a compliment, I think, because even though she engages in stereotypically male activities, it probably won't last forever.  Sex stereotypes were more profound and articulated, before the 80's.  I think Title 9 was 1979.

Exactly. That's exactly what's creepy.

That might be a fair and absolute concern as a parent of a girl in these days, but in those days, there was no photoshop to manipulate body image. 

There were generally normal (Cybill Shepherd, for example) and average healthy weight models.   Today, I would be concerned about healthy body image but during the era of that music, I don't think that was the case.

The focus and emphasis, was on the clothing and designers, and makeup use, (blue eyeshadow and white lipstick come to mind)  :lol -  more than the unhealthy body image.   By today's fashion standards, the clothing was puritanical.  ;)   

I wonder if the "shave your legs" section of Tomboy was cut due to someone realizing how creepy that line is, that this line finally crossed the line and went too far... or if it was simply cut for timing, since that part of the original version of the song - regardless of lyrical content - does run on too long, and the song is tighter as a whole with those bars removed. Maybe it's a case of both reasons simultaneously, but I could almost believe that it was a song timing issue, and nothing more. I wonder...

At the risk of raising hackles in several directions at once: aren't these songs examples of Brian's lyrics? And don't both these tracks ("Tomboy" and "Lizzie") originate from the full-court press that was "Brian is back," a point in time when his overall aptitude and judgment regarding song composition might well have been, er, a bit "compromised"?

I think one could concoct a theory that Brian tossed these tunes out as a passive-aggressive, parodic paw-swipe at Mike and his desire to take the band back into a "teenage" zeitgeist that had long since played out in terms of innocent "fun fun fun." After all, we know that Mike loved another salacious track--"Roller Skating Child"--so much that he insinuated himself into the (role of) lead lecher ,--er, lead vocal.

Never underestimate Brian's ability to play his own brand of mind games with Mike. Watching Brian explain "Hey Little Tomboy" in the filmed interview I sense he is in vintage "put on" mode, with the over-earnest, slightly sweaty apologetic explication of the song's lyrics...it's just another way for him to create some quiet mayhem on his own while reinforcing the band's status as the downright strangest major rock band of all time.

I'm not talking about body image. I'm talking about a male lurking around a not-yet-sexualized girl prodding her toward 'feminizing' herself to be more sexually acceptable.

It does not strike me in the same way. It is more of an aspirational wishful-thinking mode. 

The tense is in the present progressive /bordering on the future "I'm going to...

and you "could" does not suggest immediacy but at some future time.   Wishful thinking.   ;)

(http://i1270.photobucket.com/albums/jj611/Rob_McCabe/images-43.jpeg) (http://s1270.photobucket.com/user/Rob_McCabe/media/images-43.jpeg.html)

This is a guy who married an underage girl (yes, he was 22 - but she was still underage). This is a guy who also wrote "Girl Don't Tell Me" and "The Little Girl I Once Knew". Brian, in song, had a thing for jail bait. At least back in the 60's.

I can totally buy his middle-aged jailbait songs as passive-agressive put ons directed toward his developnentally arrested first cousin.

creepy, grooming, wishful thinking.

Sorry I don't think that way about Brian.  It looks innocent enough and not predatory as you suggest. 

I thought Marilyn was 16 when they married? That is legal age in some states. He wasn't Jerry Lee Lewis, marrying his 13 year old cousin!

I think, as a woman who was experiencing all of this at that time and at that age, I can possibly address this with a certain perspective. Not only was sexism acceptable at that time, it was highly marketable.  I don't think that was lost on the BBs.

I was very clear in the 80's that I not only had to be very bright and hard-working, but that I had to look good doing it to be successful in West LA.  When I worked with stockbrokers in Beverly Hills, I endured one of them coming up behind me (early in the morning when there weren't observers around) and grab my breasts as I sat working at my desk.  I said nothing, and avoided the guy after that.  Later, I had a man grab my thigh as I was walking down a hallway carrying a load of materials for a meeting at another job.  Again, I said nothing and avoided him after that.

Sadly, that was how it was then if a woman wanted to have a good job and keep it.  So the lyrics reflected the times, as awful as that part of it was.  Men could be blatantly sexual in their approach to young women and it was "cute" - maybe even "clever" sometimes.  In fact, it was expected, and selling it with a certain wink and leering expression was also expected.  Funny to them, I'm sure.  And we women were expecting it and dealt with it as best we could.

I think that's why the Cosby's are so thrown by what's happening to them now.  He was a big man and women would do nearly anything sexually to get ahead through what he "required" for their success.  It's horrible, but that's how it was.  The BBs were playing to that vast, dominant audience.

Sexuality is obviously a huge part of what human's are doing, and the BBs addressed that on an obviously regular basis through the lyrics.  I'm not condoning it.  I'm simply saying that they were a product of their times.  There was nothing wrong then with a TV ad for an airline showing hot young flight attendants with a song, "we really move our tails for you."  Another airline had their female flight attendants in hot pants. Male passengers would dump things on the aisle floor so that the women would have to bend over. It's how we lived then.

Be glad that your daughters don't have to live like that.  And make sure that you elect the right people so that they don't have to deal with it in the future.

The BBs lyrics were reflecting the times, and those times would certainly be considered creepy today.

Debbie, I agree. And, on the creepy scale even in current culture this is fairly low.
As someone who's read a lot of history I've come to accept that almost everyone I admire has said or done or written something sexist/racist/classist, etc. because they are all humans living with and being influenced by other humans. I don't feel any need for denial nor do I think it necessarily says much about the person. As you indicate it more often says things about that person's time. Obviously if I was born in Georgia in 1840, I would have very different ideas about race than I do, not because I'm different, but because the culture I live in is different. But surely we can read a document written then, recognize the racism in the document, use it to learn about the times, but not condemn the writer.
I don't throw out all novels written before 1995 and condemn all the writers, even though just about every instance contains sexism. Most still do of course.
Brian Wilson was pressured to write along a formula of teenage boy-girl themes. Someone that age writing such a thing is at risk of creepiness. And, as you said, it was a creepy milieu. And there are worse things written then and now.
So, creepy lyrics; not creepy writer. Has happened before, will happen again.

Emily - so well-said.  It's cultural.  There are still places on the planet (plenty of them), where women have to wear a burka so that they don't provoke sexual feelings in surrounding males.  Monotheism seems to have focused on sex - and the related desires - as being bad.  Frankly, I think due to that conditioning, we have no idea what to do with it - so we are creeped-out, etc. Because it's been so perverted in our minds over a few millennia, we all have problems thanks to that programming.  It's pretty sad, since it's fundamental to humans, but I'm as screwed up by the programming as anyone else, so I don't have the answer, other than trying to raise our kids/grandkids to be okay with their feelings.

I don't know what the age of consent was in California in 1964, but the current age is 18.

In some places, with the parents' approval, 13 was an appropriate age for marriage then.  It was a different time.  From what I understood from Brian, Marilyn's parents were wanting them to get married, so I'm guessing that's part of what happened.  Certainly, nothing illegal happened.

Not so much "monotheism" in Western culture, I think, as puritanism (with a small p).  The Song of Solomon in the Old Testament is pretty much a celebration of sexual love. Even if churches prefer to think of it as allegory, the choice of imagery is definitely not prudishly uptight.

Ty Debbie and Cyncie for representing, as you did so many other times, the voice of reason.

Yeah, if anyone  in the Beach Boys was having romps with underage girls, it would more likely have been Dennis or Mike. No, I'm not saying they did....and not saying they didn't, either.

Wonderful, thanks!  The Song of Solomon was gorgeous, and it certainly wasn't anti-sexuality.  It's what some weird church leaders tried to make it later that was the problem - a bizarre power-grab.

I met Brian when I was 17 and he was a sweet gentleman (and married) and he behaved that way.  There was a real innocence about him.  I think - at age 74 - there still is.  It's just him.  I always wondered why Brian was vilified for marrying a 16 year old when Carl did exactly the same thing.  I mean, they were both sweet young, romantic guys, and it wasn't that weird to marry a female that age at that time.  I don't think that the Hinsche's were creepy people - all I've heard is how sweet and lovely that they were/are, and the one time I met the Rovell's they were charming.  I'm guessing parental consent was required in both cases.   Different time and place...

The first person speaker in Hey Little Tomboy is deliberately doubled-voiced. That is, he is at once meant to be heard as a teenage boy and also, leering and leching behind the teenage persona, adult men. They are the equivalent of a middle-aged film director making a raunchy movie about high schoolers : Fast Times at Ridgemont High, say.

This song exemplifies the odd position the Beach Boys found themselves in in the late 70's, post Endless Summer. It's right there in their name : Boys. And in their set list : Be True to Your School, Surfer Girl, Fun Fun Fun etc. Who are they when they are playing those songs? Men in their 30s? Teenagers? Should their new songs be about adult concerns, or should they return to their old subjects? What does their audience want?

As Debbie KL said, and I agree, it was a different time and place.  Correct also, about the ages at which people married.  If you (a woman) weren't married by 24, you were considered an "old maid." That is not the average marriage age today.  And, likely parental consent was likely an issue.

And, I see no lecherous intent with Brian and the interview does talk about shaving legs, but that is not in the song and just a general off-the-cuff, "concept" comment. 

https//wwwyoutube.com/watch?v=A9AenU9iWEs

The interview from 1976. Hope it copies.   ;)

Not just in song.  He had a thing for Marilyn's youngest sister, Barbara.  And apparently was having relations with Marilyn when she was underage.

What is your definition of underage?  How could you possibly know at what age Brian was "having relations" with Marilyn?  And having a "thing" for someone doesn't make anyone guilty of anything, if that was even the case.  A person has to act on that "thing".  Are you really that hostile to Brian, and if so, why?

I will repeat myself for the sake of those who apparently don't read or comprehend: 
"I met Brian when I was 17 and he was a sweet gentleman (and married) and he behaved that way.  There was a real innocence about him.  I think - at age 74 - there still is.  It's just him.  I always wondered why Brian was vilified for marrying a 16 year old when Carl did exactly the same thing.  I mean, they were both sweet young, romantic guys, and it wasn't that weird to marry a female that age at that time.  I don't think that the Hinsche's were creepy people - all I've heard is how sweet and lovely that they were/are, and the one time I met the Rovell's they were charming.  I'm guessing parental consent was required in both cases.   Different time and place... "

Nothing creepy or weird about it in my opinion ... in either scenario. It's art, come on.

... though obviously (to me), the songs were written from the perspective of a high school aged person. This is exemplified by lyrics about being in class, at school, etc. ("going to school isn't my fondest desire, but sitting in class she set my soul on fire"). This seems to be Brian writing "Beach Boys" type songs with topics that might appeal to teenagers.

There's also an interview where Brian explains "I Wanna Pick You Up", saying something like, "It's about a guy who considers his chick a baby" or something like that ... sort of supports the third-person idea. I actually think those lyrics are pretty clever.

But this is sort of like criticizing the Bee Gees for writing "New York Mining Disaster" because they were teenage boys who were not actually involved in a mining disaster in 1941.

But to address what seems to be your main point: "Age-appropriate" is kind of loaded term. The premise that an older man and a younger girl cannot have a valid relationship is sort of implied, and I don't think that's always true.

I don't know what the sexual mores were like in Hawthorne in the earky 1960s, but Marilyn's parents seemed okay with it and I wonder of that five year age difference was that uncommon at the time. Obviously, things have moved on in most respects. I, too, regard Brian and whoever as writing in character when it comes to those mid-70s songs (and maybe for cathartic, therapeutical reasons) - not unlike Springsteen's endless litany of girls whose names end in y - okay, their ages aren't given, but you kinda figure out he's singing about a more youthful version of himself.  When asked about some inflammatory statement in a song by Eminem, Randy Newman pointed out that he was writing in role just like he often does - and noted, after all, that he didn't really hate short people.


Admittedly, I don't think it pays to look too closely to the way the stars and music of the period treated girls, whether that's 33 year-old Ringo singing, "You're Sixteen," 29 year-old Jackson Browne lamenting the loss of a sixteen year-old to the drummer in "Rosie" or  the reality of Jimmy Page with his 14 year-old groupie (or David Bowie who - according to internet scuttlebutt, 'knew' her a year earlier. I remember reading years ago an interview with Noddy Holder of Slade in which he - allegedly -  talked about groupies and noted that they asked their age, but once they said they were 16 or older, the band didn't ask any more questions.

While I can overlook any "creepiness" due to age because the writer/singer is not the same as the 'character' singing (the "You're Sixteen" example), I have always had a problem with guys in their 70's singing "Isn't it time we go steady again?"  Because in that song it clearly is being sung from an older point of view and just sounds silly when they sing it.

The other lyric that give me pause is:
"Took me back darlin' to that time in my car
When you cried all night cause we'd gone too far"

It just paint a bad picture.

I think there were also bands, perhaps at times the BBs included, that either counted on or at least indirectly benefitted from some listeners not really paying a lot of attention to lyrics. I've met many fans that *know* the lyrics to songs but haven't really truly "listened" to them or paid a great deal of attention.

Even I've been guilty of this with various songs/artists over the years, with the occasional "WTF?" moment when you actually closely pay attention to a given lyric. For instance, someone pointed out years ago that "Roller Skating Child" has the lyrics "we'll make sweet lovin' when the sun goes down, we'll even do more when her mama's not around." Assuming, now in 1976/77, "make sweet lovin'" is no longer simply a reference to polite canoodling, then wtf *else* constitutes "more?"

My thing with questionable lyrics like "Hey Little Tomboy" is this: As Emily mentioned, it's a creepy lyric, not a creepy writer. If *all* of his songs had been along the same train of thought, then it would be a different story. But the guys went through stages where they did "throwback" lyrics where the age of the "narrator" was creepy. I don't know if they ever cared or noticed. Perhaps they thought they could hide behind the same reasoning that allowed them to do the "oldies" with only occasional snarky criticism. I doubt Brian or Mike, had they been asked in 1978 to explain "Hey Little Tomboy", would have said "Oh yeah, it's a true life story about something that happened to me in 1976."

But in any event, my thing is this: They lyrics are sufficiently creepy that I don't think we need to be incredulous as to why some people would read such into it. We're not calling for anyone's head, we're not calling for a boycott, but rather simply pointing out how lecherous the lyrics were now and then.

I feel like, generally speaking, a BB message board is a pretty safe place to have such a discussion, because we all recognize, again to refer back to Emily's term, Brian's not a creepy writer.

I'm not going to walk into a newsroom in 2016 on a slow news day and play them "Lazy Lizzie" and egg them on to stir up a story about how creepy Brian was in 1976 and how he has a "secret scandalous song" in the vaults or something.

I'm a little concerned that this kind of story could actually be picked up by a news organization and run under a "You won't believe this Beach Boys song got released!" clickbait title, and the fact that HeyJude suggested such a thing means that, in some reality, it has already happened. Poor Brian  :'(

Well, "Lazy Lizzie" hasn't been released. But to the general point, if news organizations want to start going through old song lyrics to look for objectionable things, they could find more "click bait-ish" material (e.g. more popular artists).

An article about "Hey Little Tomboy" would be about one step away from writing a new article touting "Do you know who Jerry Lee Lewis married and how old she was?"

It's clear that the BB's song lyrics, for the most part, score low in terms of feminism. Even Jack Reiley rewriting "Marcella" still keeps the titular character on a pedestal. We see a clustering of "creepy" lyrics in the 1976-78 timeframe, much of it having to do with what critics at the time characterized as Brian's attempt to recapture a teen-age perspective. Let's face it, teenagers do have a strong tendency to be lustful. This is not an apology for poor cultural training--a problem that has been around for a long time in a patriarchal society and is still a long way from being transcended--but merely a recognition that matters of sex in that age range are quite often messy, manipulative, and suffer from a painful lack of articulation.

The tension between lechery, lovesickness, and a more exalted viewpoint of the ideals of romantic commitment are all over the BB's lyrics from the get-go. It's still in play on the tracks included in TWGMTR, where Mike makes several efforts to write lyrics that suggest that the BB's are still somehow "boys," and Brian sings lyrics that fully embrace the emotions and perspectives of growing old and coming to the end of one's life.

I get everybody's point but it seems to me those old songs were written from the point of view of underage boys about underage girls where as these are from the point of view of over age men about under age girls and are Gary Puckett creepy.

I listen to modern music with creepy lyrics.
It's no big deal.

Maybe Ariel Pink would really scare this pack of wimps.
 :-D

In my opinion Kokomo is way creepier than Roller Skating Child or Lazy Lizzie

It does? They went too far, and presumably, broke up because of that...and now, years later, he wonders if he can ever get her back.

I don't feel I'm being hostile to Brian in any way.  He apparently had a thing for young girls, as did many rock stars through the years.  Obviously in the case of Marilyn he acted on it, with the parents' consent.  And then, because it's Brian, he wrote about it in some songs because Brian is pretty transparent in his lyrics, what's on his mind comes out in his songs. 

But Brian pales in comparison to other rock stars such as Chuck Berry, Jimmy Page, the San Francisco bands - all were involved with underage girls at a time when it wasn't considered as serious a crime as today (statutory rape).  And other groups wrote songs about it - Come Up the Years by Jefferson Airplane, Young Girl by Gary Puckett, etc.

Even beloved mainstream artists such as David Bowie and Prince regularly challenge audiences.
The Beach Boys should abolutely not be limited to being the Leave it to Beaver of rock and roll.

Every time I ever heard that lyric from Getcha Back, I always pictured two platonic friends who fooled around a little bit, and immediately regretted it.

And that reminds me of this other no-turning-back song----in a minor key, as if to rub it in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klCXBkn0VGs

Kermit - what cracks me up about this thread is that when you listen to hip hop or some of the rap music, much of it is utterly filthy.

Whatever is in the BB catalog is tame by comparison.   Using a lens from 2016 to measure the 60's or 70's is absurd and inappropriate because it is not contemporaneous.
 
The mores were entirely different and as Don mentioned, was not a feminist-based agenda.   

Trying to assign a connotation or taking a trip through Brian's cranium is impossible.  Only he knows his conceptualization process. 

When they hand out condoms in high school, there is a presumption that you can never go too far," just use protection. 

That was not even on the radar screen back-in-the-day. 

And before Marilyn entered the picture, there was Judy Bowles.  She was born October 31, 1946, according to Jim Murphy's Becoming the Beach Boys, 1961-1963.  Murphy quotes her as saying her parents didn't have a problem with the age difference.  They did want her to graduate from high school before she married Brian, and she planned to graduate early.

:o :o I guess Brian was a pedo!  >:( :'( :lol