The Smiley Smile Message Board

In college i took media fundamentals. Part of the course was producing your own one hour radio show in which you could play whatever you liked (within reason).  Everyday I'd play a tape of 'i get around', that someone from the previous semester left behind in the radio booth. Well one day i walked into the booth while my friend was doing her show. Over the speakers i could hear someone sing "and god only knows what i'd be without you".  I was blown away with what i was hearing. It was the most beautiful thing my 19 year old ears had ever heard. Admittingly, i didn't know who was singing this song, until after it finished, my friend said "oh, brian wilson".  Since that moment i've been hooked.

I always knew 'the hits', but I didn't really think much of them, honestly. The song that really got me into them was 'Til I Die'. I fell in love with it. Still one of my favorites. Ran out and bought 'Surf's Up' the day I heard it.

No question, it was Pet Sounds. My parents had the Endless Summer album around when I was growing up, but it was just one of many records I'd listen to of theirs. Then in the mid 90s I got Pet Sounds and almost simultaneously saw one of the TV docs--I assume it was Biography or something--and heard a bit of Surf's Up. The combination of those things got me really interested.

Well.... for me my curiosity started with, ehhhmmmm, sorry, can't help it, Kokomo...   :p
Heard it on a compilation tape with 80-ies hits of one of my brothers during a short holiday in Belgium and liked it. Then my father told me it was probably the same group that had some hits in the 60-ies, I got hold of 2 "Best Of"-albums. Liked that as well, but not that I was addicted to it yet.

After that I got to listen to several albums. The 85 album and Brian's 88 solo album (from the library), but that didn't really do it. Found a 70-ies comp. with several artists on it, including a track called Surf's Up, thought it would be another surf-song, but wasn't like that at all, and decided not to like it (yet) either... got hold of a vinyl 2-fer: Sunflower, Surf's Up..... and surprise surprise, didn't get it either (nowadays both are favorites of mine)...

And then I finally bought Pet Sounds.... and liked it a lot immediately. Read something about SMiLE, decided to buy the then recently released 2-fer Smiley Smile / Wild Honey.... and strangely enough I loved it!! From then on, I was hooked for life...

It was not a single song or album, but a trio of LPs ... My folks had three Beach Boys albums in their collection when I was a kid: Shut Down Volume 2, Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!), and Pet Sounds. It was a combination of all three of these ... "Don't Worry Baby" and "Wouldn't It Be Nice" have been HUGE songs for me for as long as I can remember.

I didn't know of any records that sounded quite like them. And I still don't.

Pet Sounds got me intrigued. The Smile myth and 'Til I Die furthered my interest in all things Brian Wilson to an almost obsessive level. Then came Friends, which has been my favourite album ever since I first got to discover it in 2001 or 2002. I came to appreciate the early hits just a bit later on. Today I love them all.

Bought the first two albums when they were released and thoroughly enjoyed them. But Surfer Girl was the one that seemed to find a special place in my soul-the harmonies nd Brian's soaring vocals, and the writing was everything anyone could ask from music. Bought it in the local "record store"-one side of the shop had mono releases and the other side was stereo releases. Not having a stereo back then, I bought the mono. I bought it again when I finally got a stereo-it was like hearing a different album.

my father use to always play me the hits record when we drove around (he was soooo cool)

but one day I heard "the trader", being the musical snob that I was I thought..now THATS a fucking record...and here I am.

My father and my sister always watched the An American Band VHS, and my brother and my elder sister loved it then too but I found it boring, I always had in my mind some weird guys with beards singing about surfing and I always felt asleep during AAB, but I loved the hits like Surfin' USA and I Get Around. One day I wanted to buy a Rocky 3 soundtrack CD but I bought a Beach Boys best of for my sister and I borrowed it very often and loved all the songs and couldn't get enough of it. I got the Platinum Collection and since then I called me as a fan. It was the hits that I really liked like Kokomo, Be True To Your School and Surfin' and something like that. The only LP my father had, besides a late 60ies comp, was Still Cruisin', which is still one of my favourite albums. I really digged the title song first and of course Kokomo, now I love more Island Girl and Somewhere Near Japan. Anyway, when I first watched the Knebworth concert (Good Timin' was the song I couldn't get enough of it) I was soooooo impressed that I wanted to know more about the guys. I watched the EH docu, An American Family and bought some DVDs. Within 2 months I got all albums. And in the following months/years I learned to love all of them. But it's the hits that bring me back to that wonderful summer of 2005.  :3d   The song that really brought me to  the Beach Boys was I Get Around.  :)

Hmm, well I can say I didn't really love them the way I do now at first.  I have a few long anecdotes here so I'll break it down. Well it all started in elementary.  Our music teacher had to sing all these different kinds of songs.  One of them was this song apparently by the Beatles but which I have never found any existence of elsewhere.  Interestingly enough I still have the tune.  But anyways, this same teacher had us sing two Beach Boys songs: Surfin' Safari and Surfin' USA.  The real surfing related songs of the beginning aren't my thing even now, so while it was pleasant in the same way I could find some other just as a pleasant, it didn't encourage to look further into the catalogue.

Now when about 9 or so I started getting into the rock/pop music of the 60's and 70's.  Before that I wasn't too into anything.  The Beatles came first and then the Stones.  After a while of broadening my tastes a bit, my dad made a custom CD (just to put into perspective my generation).  There were a few of them, and 4 or 5 more Beach Boys songs ended up on there.  Surfin' USA was there and though it was interesting to hear the real version of it, it still didn't stand out from any of the other songs.  Little Deuce Coupe and Fun, Fun, Fun were also on the CD.  They were again pleasant and bouncy, though at the same time it was nothing more than that to me.  Those particular songs for me now I consider decent but nowhere near what I would later discover.  Another CD was compiled.  Kokomo and Sloop John B were the Beach Boys song selections.  I was a little more impressed with these actually.  Kokomo reminded of the previous songs but with a more modern sound.  While I don't generally think modern sounds are better, especially now, the melody did work for me.  At the time I assumed Carl's parts were the same high voice from the older songs though lol.  Sloop John B instantly became my favorite song I knew of theirs, and it kind of gave me a glimpse into a less formulaic style.  I usually need an obsession to spur me on to the artist's back catalogue, so I still wasn't hooked.

I didn't really expand my knowledge of the songs for a while.  I overheard my dad discuss Brian Wilson's life issues through the ages, so that was kind of interesting.  He also showed admiration for Pet Sounds, though at the time I intertwined it with his talk about Kokomo being the first new thing he'd heard from them in ages.  I somehow ended up thinking Pet Sounds was an early 90's "comeback" (I'm aware Kokomo was late 80's, but that was in my head at the time) for the band (new issues aside).  I also heard from here and the radio of the Wilson brothers, and that they were all members of the band.  They played Surfin' Safari on the radio once with this family backstory so that was a bit of deja vu.

Pop culture was the next stop for me.  I heard All Summer Long on a Simpsons episode (spoofing American Graffiti), and Wouldn't It Be Nice both on a commercial and 50 First Dates (so you can tell this is getting recent).  Those both impressed me fairly well, but in the same way I knew Daydream Believer by the Monkees and Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks.  They were good songs but it just didn't convince to explore.  The two BB songs I just mentioned are great songs for me.  Now that I've listened to in the right mindset (before I'm totally into a group I don't listen so attentively), this is true especially today.

I was on a day trip one day and I wasn't back at some of our family CDs.  On this same trip I took a Led Zeppelin album which is another band I wasn't totally into yet, so that's kind of interesting.  Anyways, the Beach Boys CD was Pet Sounds.  At this point I knew Wouldn't It Be Nice and Sloop John B, so though songs resonated with me upon listening.  Going back to what I said about the listening mindset, this still didn't clinch my interest.  Granted I thought it was fairly nice but not knowing most of the material did bore me a bit at first to be completely honest.  I don't feel the same today, but just to put how differently I felt God Only Knows didn't stand out to me until repeated listens.  These repeated listens would come together along with the next steps, to reach the opinion I think of the album now.  It was not responsible for my obsession however.

Sorry this is so long, but we're getting there. :P As my interest in classic rock music continued to grow, one day I decided I would look up a top classic rock songs list and listen to them all through Youtube.  I took one with 100 songs, two of which were Beach Boys songs.  They were California Girls and Good Vibrations.  CG I recognized but to this day I can't remember where.  I didn't really associate it with the band too much but I was aware of the song.  I liked the chorus.  Good Vibrations I actually found a bit different at first with the theremin emphasized in this particular live performance.  It definitely was interesting, but most of the songs on the list were.  The Beach Boys still didn't stand out, even though especially the latter is a huge song for me now.  That goes back again to listening mindset.

Now I'm approaching the real deal.  I came across an episode of Full House once upon a time with the Beach Boys on it.  I didn't think much of it, but in the end credits they did play a couple live songs.  Barbara Ann and Kokomo I believe.  Later in the series of that show a version of Forever was played.  I know some people hate the version but the melody really reminded of a Beatles ballad at the time (now I consider it better, especially having heard the original version).  So I actually looked up where the song fit in their catalogue, because it was unlike what I still had though of the Beach Boys.  I noticed it appeared both on Sunflower and Summer In Paradise, but I figured the older one would be interesting to hear.  But I didn't hear it yet.  Nevertheless an idea was set.

I came across that episode of Full House again with the live performance.  At the time I thought it would have been a 70's song of theirs for some reason (my perception of the BBs music in comparison to their career was off).  The live version sounded more modern to me, and I had no clue what the studio sounded like.  My opinion of Barbara Ann has lessened considerably since then, probably to the level of the first songs I heard of the Beach Boys.  But it did do something significant.  I had no clue as to the name, and really did want to hear it.  I went to Amazon in hopes to hear a sample of it, and figured it'd be on their first greatest hits album I see.  That ended up being Sounds of Summer, which did have it, but I still didn't know the name.  That forced me to randomly pick out a song here or there.  I went to the third quarter of the album with my odd presumption into its period in their career.  The track sequencing had me in luck, but not before having heard I Can Hear Music, Do You Wanna Dance, and Darlin'.  I was adventurous to listen to others.  I heard the ones I knew again (Surfin' Safari, Surfin' USA, Little Deuce Coupe, Fun Fun Fun, California Girls, Wouldn't It Be Nice, Sloop John B, and Good Vibrations).  I also listened to a couple other random ones (which I believe were Wild Honey and I Get Around).  This was pretty impressive, but Darlin' especially REALLY jumped out at me.  That song just really caught my ear. That's probably the answer to this thread finally.

A little after this time I got an I-pod, which Darlin' promptly found its place on, as well as Wild Honey, Do You Wanna Dance, and I Can Hear Music.  I was just trying to get down some I'd heard that one day.  Carl Wilson's voice was dominant on three of these four songs, and this really got me interested.  I would go through the catalogue looking for songs with his vocals in it.  It proved well as next I found This Whole World, Friends, and Long Promised Road.  After that I starting grouping some of the interesting ones of the past (including the original Forever) and it just spiralled from there.  I'll spare you of anymore for today. :hat

Song: When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)

Album(s): Endless Summer, Sounds of Summer, Pet Sounds


The rest is history and have not looked back since memorial day 2004...

well im a fan of oldies and classic rock and i knew the early beach boys hits with there stripped tee shirts. I was thinking of buying an album from them or a best then i decided on pet sounds hearing how great that album is so I went to a store and they they had pet sounds with the dvd brought it listened to it and was blown away then the rest is history

CATCH A WAVE

Being American and listening to oldies radio as a child I was always aware of the Beach Boys music. One day when I was a bit older, I heard 'Catch A Wave' on the radio and was really blown away by it, the production and especially Brian's falsetto on the song. It took me places music had never taken me before.

The song was 'Wouldn't It Be Nice', now my favorite song, and it was the album it belongs to. I first heard the 1990 Pet Sounds CD remaster in April-May 1999, changing me forever. Very soon after that I bought Endless Summer on CD to get a feeling of what came before. So that's why I'm here.

Mid-73 - or maybe '74 - and I raided my elder sisters record collection and came across this cool picture of a surfer (albeit not a real photo but a drawing) so out of sheer curiosity I put the album on the family turntable. A cheap EMI re-issue of the "All Summer Long" album and 'POW', that did it for me ...
Sadly lost the original copy years ago (don't think I ever did give it back to my sister) but have since replaced it in my now vast collection with a signed edition ...  ;D

As a kid, I bought the Still Cruisin' cassette, because I new "Surfin' USA" from the radio and thought that's a cool song and wanted to have it. The person in the record shop told me it's on that cassette, of course it wasn't. But I wasn't disappointed and played SC over and over again. That's probably why I still love it. So much for the BB, I became a Beatles fan and didn't care anymore.
Years later, someone at school had internet and even a CD burner and sold MP3-sourced Audio CD's. You told him what songs you wanted and you got them the next day. He must have made millions. I always loved "Sloop John B" and that had to be part of the CD - "What, you like that?", the rest of the CD was cool stuff.
After that, Santa Claus had to bring me a Best of Comp and then things started to become really interesting. I knew half of the songs anyway, but songs like "The Little Girl I Once Knew", "You're So Good To Me" or "You Still Believe In Me" were new to me and sounded so different and special. From Paul McCartney's praise I knew that Pet Sounds had to be something special, so that was the next step and from then on, nothing could stop the BB journey. At the same time, there was a TV doc "Die BB und der Satan" on TV with a long SMiLE segment ("Fire" with firestation film, "Surf's Up" and all that stuff), I was fascinated. We got internet and I spent hours downloading the SMiLE stuff (hours with a 56 K modem, a lot of patience for a little music). There were tons of SMiLE sites around in 1999. After that I got the GV boxset, PS boxset and all the twofers over the next year. See, illegal MP3 download can have a promotional aspect!  :-D

I think it's awesome that some of you got turned on by things like Full House and Still Cruisin'. That means even the cheese serves a higher purpose!

I used to hate them, I guess in retrospect I didn't give them a chance because of things like Full House and Still cruisin'. I remember ridiculing someone for likign them once. Man, what a snob I was! I couldn't imagine doing that now about anybody, but ten years ago. You betcha.

 I often played Wouldn't It Be Nice to students to teach a certain lesson and after a while I started thinking that the song was(surprise, surprise) pretty cool.

I saw God Only Knows at the end of some Cheesey romantic comedy and it made me cry--the music, nto the movie.

Last December(about a week later), I bought Sounds of Summer on a whim at a mall record store while my girlfriend was taking her sweet time buying clothes.

The kids reallyloved I Get Around, playing the intro over and over and over again which was the second song on it and I just started listening to it a lot.

I checked them out on You Tube and her some smile stuff(that I can't find there anymore!) and the TV special Surf's Up and was blown away.. My girlfriend bought me The three disc Sounds of Summer Platinum Collection for my birthday. And that was all she wrote. I knew I would have to have all (or almost all) of their albums. I still don't have them all, but I've managed to accumulate an awful lot in the last few months.

I guess then:
God Only Knows/Wouldn't It Be Nice
Sounds of Summer
Smile fragments/Surf's Up
Sound of Summer Platinum Collection--a great collection

Well strangely enough the thing that got me interested initially was the Beach Boys TV movie An American Family. I saw my dad watching it once but wasn't really interested but one day (sometime in late 2005) I just sat down and watched it through. Hearing songs like Add Some Music To Your Day, Wouldn't It Be Nice, Surfer Girl, God Only Knows etc.. totally amazed me. But the two songs that really blew me away were In My Room (especially at the end of the song) and Forever. I went and got my dads copy of the Sunflower/Surf's Up twofer and listened to Forever and was totally blown away. I listened to the song over and over. I then heard Tears In The Morning, and although it's nowhere near my favourite song now, I thought at the time "gee, this is pretty good and I've never even heard of it before so maybe there are a lot more songs that are really good that I've never even heard before". I then listened to that CD several times. I remember the first time I heard Surf's Up and I couldn't comprehend what I was hearing. It was just such a strange song (at the time). But that has always been a favourite of mine since. I think I then heard a cheap greatest hits compilation. I must say I wasn't blown away (although I have since come to love and appreciate most of the hits). I then went through the rest of the band's catalogue (slowly) beginning with Pet Sounds and was totally amazed at what I heard.

"Heroes & Villains"

My parents had a BB hits vol.1 LP that they played when i was young, but it never really registered.

I got into 60s music and psychedelia in my teens, around when the Beatles Anthology series came out. I used to listen to Terry Wogan on BBC Radio 2 in the mornings on the way to school. He played Heroes and Villains and i was stunned that music could be so complex and beautiful and just plain bizarre. i rushed out to buy a second hand 20 Golden Greats with the song on it for £1 and never looked back.

I remember great days out hunting through second hand shops and record fairs for the out-of-print BB LPs (long before the 70s albums were reissued on CD). I was so excited to find LA (Light Album) or, the holy grail, Surf's Up, on holiday in Canada. I paid CA $15 and stared at the sleeve for hours before flying home and being able to listen to it. Those were the days.

Surfin USA..it was the first 45 I bought

The first time I heard The Beach Boys had to be in '95 when I was 6. That was when the first of those three volume Greatest Hits came out, with the wierd covers and all. It was also the version with the error, so I grew up thinking that there was no cheerleaders on "Be True To Your School" and "Help Me, Rhonda" always had a harmonica! Then, in '99, we got the single disc issue of Pet Sounds and I think I was officially taken after that. With the Beatles, my parents turned me into die-hards, but with the BBs, it's been the opposite. We're a Massachusetts family, with no connection to California or anything, so it was understandable why I couldn't find any BB albums in thier vinyl collection, among all the British Invasion, Folk and Monkee ( ::) ) LPs. For years it was just the "Greatest Hits," but then I was like, we gotta get more and they couldn't understand it. My dad (who is nowhere near a music fan of anything) couldn't understand why me, a kid who could never surf, would want this stuff. I've had them listen to everything, and I think they understand now.  ;D I dragged them into Boston to see Brian in '06 and they said it was the best concert they'd ever been to. So the tables have certainly turned... :P

First was "Barbara Ann" which I heard on the radio when I was about 5.
Sounds corny but I liked the name "Beach Boys" because I liked the beach and the sunshine and the song was catchy.

Later on I heard such as "Breakaway" and "Cottonfields" and loved those.
GV was always on the radio as a DJ's choice of oldie (they got to choose them back then) and I was delighted to hear that the band would occasionally hit the UK charts with such as "Sail On Sailor", "Rock and Roll Music" and "Lady Lynda".

I had a UK hits compilation and got into the surf songs through that.

My interest stepped up a few years ago when I started collecting the 2-fers and started acquiring the Unsurpassed Masters series.

I'm now totally hooked and the boys have surpassed The Beatles as my musical obsession. You can never get tired of the boys and Brian as there's so much great stuff there. Some rubbish too but I'll forgive them that  ;D

I've caught the wave and I'm sitting on top of the world.

my dad's 8-track copy of the Best of the beach boys

I'd always liked the Beach Boys, and there was no one particular song that turned me on as such. One of my earliest memories (I must've been 3 or 4) is being in Blackpool on a sunny day with my parents and hearing Surfin' USA from a radio in a chip shop and another memory is moving house and I Get Around being on the radio in the removal van! Strange isn't it how you remember things like that...

We'd always had the Greatest Hits at my house but it wasn't until I saw the Endless Harmony documentary that I was blown away by the diverse material. I met Alan Boyd at the Denny Bash in Lutterworth in 2004 and thanked him for that documentary - heh heh! Being a die-hard Beatles fan first, most books on them always mention the Beach Boys as an influence so there was always and intrigue from that point of view.

Also, I remember I found Vincent Bugliosi's "Helter Skelter" book when I was ten and my Mum mentioned that (in her own words) that "Charles Manson was friend's with the Beach Boys". That creeped me out!  ;)

Key Track: I Get Around
Key Album: Summer Days (and Summer Nights!)

It all started when I was 9 or 10 (that would be around 1998), with the "Made In U.S.A." compilation. I especially liked "I Get Around", "California Girls", "Good Vibrations", 'Heroes And Villains", "Sloop John B." and "Caroline, No".

I remember that I used to stop playing the album just after "Caroline, No" because, to my 9-year-old self, the next songs didn't have the same "feel": "Come Go With Me", "Getcha Back"... When, a few years later, I heard about what had happened around 1966/1967, I was amazed at how my 9-year-old self had managed to hear the difference between the earlier tracks and the later ones. But now I love all of them!

...And if you're talking about my first-ever encounter with the Beach Boys, it's actually one of the few memories I have from my early childhood. In France, around 1991, there was a TV ad for the Chrysler Voyager (it was sold by Chrysler, as neither Plymouth nor Dodge cars were sold in France at the time)... And the soundtrack was "Good Vibrations". I remember it even today! I guess you could say I was hooked for life when I was just 3  :-D

In 1966 (or 7) I travelled from the west coast of the US (one of those states north of California) to visit friends who lived in Gerard's Cross near London...they had a copy of the UK version of the first "Best of the Beach Boys".

I'd heard some/many of those songs before, but not all. Man, I was hooked.
What a GREAT compilation.

I love this thread, but it is starting to remind me of an al-anon meeting.

It started sometime in the mid 60's as a 10 year old or younger - I can remember listening to my transistor radio in bed of a night - the song was Wendy - the harmonies created some sort of chemical reaction in my body that exists to this day. Then in my early teens hanging out on the Aussie beaches I was naturally drawn to the Beach Boys hearing I Can Hear Music & H&V on the radio are stand out memories, I really got into the new albums - Surfs Up, C&TP and Holland - the In Concert album was the clincher - started to dig back through the albums and dicovered Today!, Pet Sounds and Wild Honey - there have been extended periods in my life where I have to hear the BB music eveyday - at least in some little way.

I loved Endless Summer when it came out (I was 10).   Then Disc 2 of the GV box tracks 18 to 28 changed my life.  Seriously changed my life.

More like a Brian-anon meeting...

unless someone got hooked by Honkin Down the Highway (2008 version)

When I was in kindergarten or first grade I'd always here the classic rock stations on the school bus and out of all the hits they played from the 50s-70s the music that stood out to me the most was that of the Beach Boys. From then on, I proceeded to buy every album of their's I could find till I finally got a discography together and bought all their albums on LP and CD. That was the beginning, now I have the cartoon woody with surfboard from the back of the Surfin' Safari album tattoo'd on my arm and their music never gets old to me.

;D

When I was in 4th grade they had a laser light show in the gym featuring Surfin' USA.

Well they always seemed to be around. I was born in 1976 and I became a fan in 1988. Maybe because I had always liked fifties and sixties music I was a bit more aware then most. They seemed kind of cheesy though. Come Go With Me, Getcha Back, California Dreamin, Wipe Out etc. I remember those coming out and they were OK to me but no more. I knew Brian had some problems and that one of them knew Manson. I kind of knew Mike too, and had heard of an LP called Pet Sounds (which I thought was made of animal sound effects).  Then I don't know gradually I liked them a little more. I saw the RSG appearance on a VHS I had, and it was kind of cool. I then caught AAB on VH1 in 1988 it really intrigued me. I never had heard songs like, Heroes and Villians, Surf's Up, or Forever before. I bought Endless Summer and it was Girl Don't Tell Me that impressed. It had so much depth. From there I suppose I got hooked on them.
So yes their 80's persona was an obstacle to get through, but once I heard the real advanced stuff beyond the basic hits (which I grew to love too) it was all over for me. For the last twenty years they have remained my favorite band. I think that now it is easier to learn about the Beach Boys now. Many more books, much less cheese, much more critical acclaim, and I am glad their rep is basically restored.

First BB song I ever heard was California Girls when I was about 6 or 7 years old in the early 90s. My mom had a habit of always starting on Side 4 whenever she played her copy of Endless Summer, so the first BBs I can recall hearing is "I wish they all could be California...".

It was in September 1962 when Surfin' Safari went straight to Nr 1 in Sweden.  A couple of months later even Ten Little Indian went to Nr 6.  I've been hooked ever since the first single.

Well, my experience was a little bit different than the others’ here. 

I was 9 years old in the autumn of ’65.  My local radio station played the hits of the day, so I had heard all those immortal early Beach Boys songs.  I, however, preferred The Beatles, and when Columbia/Screen Gems manufactured The Monkees just for kids my age, I was hooked.  That autumn I got the Barbara Ann single as a gift, though, and I played it, but when I turned that record over and heard the Beach Boys doing their impression of the Beatles (Girl Don’t Tell Me), I ended up playing that side more.  Still, I liked lots of other groups better, so I didn’t own any more Beach Boys records until many, many years later.  I do remember liking Good Vibrations quite a bit when I heard it on the radio, but even then I wasn’t hooked.  As I got into my teen years, my tastes went in a different direction, and I got into heavier, weirder stuff.  I still liked the Beatles, because they were doing Sgt. Peppers, MMT, White Album, etc., but I also got into Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, the Who, and stuff like that.  By the time I was in high school, I was listening to more complex fusion stuff like Mahavishnu Orchestra and Zappa, or ‘prog’ rock like Yes or King Crimson. 

Fast forward to 1988….I was working with a guy who started talking about Brian Wilson.  I knew who Brian Wilson was, but knew little about him.  My friend started telling me about the whole Smile saga, and a little about Brian Wilson’s life, and one day he brought me a cassette that he’d made for me.  On side one was Brian’s ’88 solo album, which I found strange, quirky, but very good.  But then...on side two of that tape was an album called Smiley Smile.  Now, I had heard Heroes and Villains before, and obviously I had heard Good Vibrations, but the rest of this stuff was completely foreign to me.  What the hell?  Wind Chimes, Wonderful, Little Pad, and Fall Breaks just knocked me out.  I could not believe that this was the Beach Boys.  I listened over and over.  I played that tape to anyone who would listen and to some who wouldn’t listen.  I wore that tape out (but I still have it).  Well, after that I started obsessing over the Smile material, then I bought Pet Sounds (which was another WTF moment…how did I miss this?), then the twofers, then the box (which caused a huge verbal fight between me and my girlfriend at the time…”You paid how much for this?”), and then I got internet access, and the rest is, as they say, history.

So, yeah, Smiley Smile.

Oh yeah, in my school was a dia show about California, and several hundreds kids were there, and they started playing "Surfin' USA" and I got goose gimples, after school I bought the Platinum Collection. 

"Smile." Heard about it in 1985, when my dad read David Leaf's book sitting on the beach in Monterey. I didn't get serious about seeking it out until the early '90s, but I got obsessed with "Smile" after seeing the black & white documentary about Brian Wilson. Not in the same league as the Chet Baker documentary, but mysterious enough to intrigue. Especially seeing Thurston Moore in it.

Seeing that Brian Wilson had any tie to the counter-culture at all... I loved his sweet voice on "Don't Worry Baby" my whole life, so when I heard him sing cryptic lyrics on "Wonderful" and "Surf's Up," I just felt like I found the music I'd always wanted to hear, but never knew existed.

Nice.

"In my room" - just channel hopping and came across the endless harmony doc on TV

"I Get Around". I was in a car with a few friends on a nice summer day, that song came on the radio, everybody in the car started singing and clapping along and that's when I first realized of a Beach Boys song that it was something special.

The album that made me realize that the Beach Boys were more than a band with a few cool golden oldies was when I heard "Sunflower".

I actually got started with Jan and Dean, thanks to the movie "Dead Man's Curve". I was in an El Cheapo goods shop and they had a K-Tel LP with all the J&D hits re-recorded in 1976 (I didn't realise most of the hit tracks were Beach Boys tunes). Several months later the Beach Boys Medley hit the charts and I asked Santa for the "Greatest Hits" compilation which came out in Australia at the end of 1981. The cool thing was 1: The LP was solid songs from start to finish. Nothing where I thought I had to skip the tracks, and 2: there was a promo sleeve included which listed all the Capitol double LP reissues up to Wild Honey/Friends (and including several greatest-hits LPs as well). My mission was slowly to acquire these records (Summer Days/Party! being my first). I vividly recall upon first playing Pet Sounds how I didn't like it!! About a year later traying to scavenge as much info on the band as possible (this was the '80's and they band were extremely passe) I began to read snippets about Smile and the legendary "Fire" song. I at first thought they meant "Smiley Smile". I recall once playing H&V and Good Vibrations  back to back and remarking how they had similar instruments playing. My young mind theorized perhaps they were done at the same session?! Then came the fateful day where I acquired the first Smile LP boot which had the Byron Preiss reference tape tracks on it and I was blown away. The rest is history.

Liked most music of the 60's but The Beach Boys the most. When 20/20 came out, my life was definitely changed musically. It was a very dramatic emotional shift for a 19 year old. Those were tough years with my social life and I was mostly laughed at, that is until Surf's Up came out. The rest is history as I molded my career path to let me in the world of The Beach Boys. Yes, it was that important.

California Dreaming (you had to ask...)

The Beach Boys existed for me initially as the purveyors, as David Leaf says, of “the California Myth”. Growing up in the suburbs of NYC, the mythical vision of the eternal sunshine of the SoCal mind worked its way from the TV set, record player, and the movies into my noreaster bones. I grew up loving those Sam Arkoff AIP Beach Party films. The first 45 that I ever bought was DAWN by the 4 Seasons, but it was the flip side, NO SURFIN' TODAY, that really haunted me –  kind of an inside flip of the bird at the Boys, but an oddly haunting, ghostly song ("Angry sea, took my love from me...). There they were, the California Girls, all over the movie screens. Sandra Dee as GIDGET (but especially in the wonderfully icky TAMMY AND THE DOCTOR, w/ future hipster Peter Fonda), innocent and guileless Carol Lynley in UNDER THE YUM YUM TREE, smart cookie (Mother) Dolores Hart in WHERE THE BOYS ARE…The Golden Girls girls, the blonde hair/blue eyed shiksa goddesses who etched themselves onto my impressionable young brain as the vision of the Eternal Surfer Girl that I have probably been daydreaming about most of my life since (and have occasionally fallen in love with). RIDE THE WILD SURF was also a primal scene for my city boy liquid dreams - still a great surf-buddy film fantasy (and later, the end of the dream and the nostalgia for time lost with its darker mirror, Milius' BIG WEDNESDAY), pacific pipe-dreams for this skinny surfless jewish kid from Queens. The west coast was indeed the Promised Land for east coast dreamers who watched tv shows and went to Saturday matinees in the early 60's.

My formative years of pop music were shaped primarily by my big sister’s record collection found in her tan 45 case – now we’re talking about that bland “pop idol” period between Elvis’ Army and February 9/64 that every critic hates, but I happen to LOVE, mostly  from early imprinting and the particular production sounds – Bobby Vee, James Darren, Bobby Rydell, the Girl Groups, Paul Peterson and Shelly Fabares ...the sound of the production of JOHNNY ANGEL, to be precise, that ultra-white, creamy dreamy fetishized and Spectorized, petticoated, reverbed, high heeled and stockinged sound – David Lynch knows it only too well, evident from his smart use of Connie Stevens’ 16 REASONS in MULHOLLAND DRIVE. The sound of the studio-made star doing essentially what were publicity singles from COLPIX records (love those drenched-with-reverb-to-hide-the-weak-voices productions) and the Philly teen Idol driven CAMEO/PARKWAY record company. Unlike Brian, I never cared much for Annette, however…(but do love Spring).

So I was well aware of the Beach Boys in the early sixties, of course, but mostly through all of their attending cultural influence - didn't buy the singles. The Beatles ruled everything on our side of the street. Starting in 1966, however, I was really taken by the Wouldn’t It be Nice/God Only Knows single (I distinctly remember hearing it on a radio during hayride with a lovely girl at a dude ranch, back when ‘dude’ had a different meaning), but I only had a vague notion of PET SOUNDS and certainly had no idea what it was, just knew that it had a rather uninviting cover and I still couldn't afford to really buy lps anyway ( I would later get into PET SOUNDS on an 8 track tape in my best friend's brand new GTO as we drove across the country to...Big Sur). GOOD VIBRATIONS, of course, was everywhere that year, but I don’t think I even had the single at the time. The Four Seasons, those Jersey Boys were IT for me in those early days, blasting out of the transistor speakers like no one else. Loved Frankie’s falsetto then even more than Brian’s at that time, and the studio drumming and tom-tom fills of the great unheralded Buddy Saltzman and Bob Crewe's  punchy sound... OPUS 17 (DON’T YOU WORRY ‘BOUT ME), WALK LIKE A MAN, BIG MAN IN TOWN, TELL IT TO THE RAIN and their version of SILENCE IS GOLDEN still rock my world - east coast pocket symphonies with only one movement but incredible tension and drive toward climax (the falsetto arising from the unison background vox); this ItaliAmer street romanticism that would eventually fulfill its promise with Springsteen's soft summer nights...

Pete Fornatele and Jonathan Schwartz on the great FM station from NYC, WNEW-FM, both loved the Beach Boys and gave them hip cred on the burgeoning cool FM airwaves (you cannot believe how creative and relaxed those stations were – such an education and so hip in their choices and they had a great sense of leisure and silence around them compared with the non-stop barrage of gapless noise that fill current airwaves), and I can remember hearing SMILEY SMILE being played without interruption one afternoon and thinking how very strange this was – and then a wonderful WNEW DJ named Roscoe played Wind Chimes and I taped it on my SONY reel to reel deck and kept listening back to the exquisite deep-welled chorale at the tail. Again and again, like Brian's BE MY BABY. I was a pretty straight kid (viz. drugs) in high school (graduated in ‘71) but I knew something was going on here, Mr. Jones…

I had a great job in the record department of a huge department store during 1968-69, when it all broke open – and that’s when my Beach Boys and Brian Wilson awareness really took off. My primal scene was, oddly enough, the (stereo!) single of BREAKAWAY (with CELEBRATE THE NEWS on the flip side) on the new, ugly, orange, non-Beatled Capitol logo. Couldn’t play it enough (“found out it was in my head”) – especially the sheer SOUND of it (and wasn’t it great to hear BW cover it again on the last few tours?). And who was this Reggie Dunbar, I wondered?? From there, I went backwards in my Beach Boys education. 20/20, Friends, Wild Honey, etc. I started reading whatever I could about Brian Wilson (you have to remember that any serious rock press was still in its infancy) and became somewhat aware of The Myth (though SMiLE didn’t really enter my consciousness until I later found the infamous Siegel article reprinted in a book I found by chance in the campus bookstore at college).

Great pop music has been the greatest and most consistent pleasure of my life. The records that thrilled me when I was a kid still do - the rush comes right back (especially in the car). Brian's melodies and his transcendent  musical spirit has always cut the deepest, as it has for all of us - bypassing all interference, bodiless, going straight for the soul...."feels" indeed.

- PS



 

One afternoon in the summer of 1974 I was seated in the backseat of some old car with a friend of mine being driven to mini-golf by his older brother. ENDLESS SUMMER was playing on his cassette deck and by the time it got to "I Get Around" I asked the brother who it was.  I ended up buying  a small handful of BB singles that summer ("Help Me Rhonda" was the first). While I never ended up buying ENDLESS SUMMER, I did purchase the songbook and remember playing "Girl Don't Tell Me" over and over on my Optigon organ (a strange keyboard that reproduced different sounds depending on which flexible disc was inserted). I hadn't even heard the actual song at that point, but loved the melody so much. I eventually bought the first two BEST OFs and was seriously into those when I first heard "Good Vibrations" on the radio. I couldn't believe it was the same band and started seeking out what I considered their more "mature" music. By the time LOVE YOU came out I had all the original albums.

JEEZ.. After reading all your thoughts its amazing how diverse our experiences are... And im old as dirt..!!..1st time i heard BB.. Spring 62.. Santa Monica Beach..CA..Heard Surfin ..S safari...409..Im 9 1/2 yrs old...By spring of 63..Susa + shut down are hits..Im still not buying records yet..My mom"s collection was Country + Teen Idols + novelty records..The HIPPEST thing on the radio was BB..Jan + Dean..4 Seasons..Summer of 63.. 1st record i EVER bought...WAS...Surfer Girl LDC..Its over with me now.. A lifelong OBSESSION with music..! Begged my uncle for a guitar.. Went down to Mcarthur park ..{LA}
He bought a KAY f hole acoustic guitar.. 26.00 !!..Lotta money back then..!!..Then joined school band ..Learned drums..From that point on i bought every BB single + played on my one speaker record player.. Lip synching in my room in front of a mirror pretending to BE..The BB..LOL...!!!.. Every holiday i asked for BB albums as gifts + got them all.. My favorite time period was when 64 hit + all the singles had PIC SLEEVES.. The race was on ..Beatles + BB..!!...The first BB lp that hit me over the head that i didnt skip tracks was..All Summer Long..The previous lp"s had some filler.. Pic sleeve to I Get Around + DWB hit me hard.. These were guys from my neighbour hood...And my obsession for the harmonies has driven me nuts all these years..ANGELS..!!..In late 60"s to early 70's i took TONS of flack for BB music..What turned the tide was ..Surfs Up lp..I remember being at my friends older brothers house..He never talked to me..to young ..The lights were low + smokin herb..Big brother owns Surfs up lp but im not aware of it.. He puts this on + plays it + the whole room goes REAL Quiet..Everone in room is trippin on the sounds.. Thats the lp that turned the fence sitters into fans..After that nite i NEVER took flack for BB music..i cant name my favorites too many for here..Plus it shifts from mood..I will say that when i get down inside..BB music lifts me up + takes the pain away for awhile.. BW 88 solo lp played on my stereo for months..Went thru a terrible divorce.. I just hope when things get down ..the BB have their own music to listen + escape...Cause the roughest times in my life the BB soundtrack kept me sane...Paul

This seems like a good topic for my first post on this board...

My first Beach Boys experience was in kindergarden (1991).  For our class play we had everyone in the class be a different letter of the alphabet and then as we went through we were also like traveling from east coast to west coast.  We must not have had enough people in the class to do the whole alphabet because I was "W" and went last.  I got to pull out a wheelborrow with a watermelon in it and be from California.  I came out in a little one-piece bathing suit and sunglasses, said my little line about "W" and then the rest of the class came out and we all sang "Surfin' USA".

What really turned me on to it in fanatic status was when Sounds of Summer came out.  To promote it they were showing An American Family on VH1 classic.  I didn't know much about the Beach Boys aside from the hits, and as inaccurate or whatever as that movie is, it was what got me more curious.  So I got Sounds of Summer, fell in love with the songs I hadn't heard before like H&V, Darlin' and Wild Honey and a few months later bought Pet Sounds and the Smiley Smile/Wild Honey twofer and that was were it really took off.

Oddly enough, "Sail On Sailor" and "Be Here In The Mornin'"
I had Pet Sounds, wasn't a fan at first. I bought the "Classics selected by Brian Wilson" CD and was hooked on the later BB tunes on there ("Busy Doin' Nothin," "Surf's Up") but as I was listening to sound samples on Amazon.com I heard "Be Here In The Mornin'" in it's 20-second sample format. It was so different from anything I heard. So many great little hooks and Carl's quirky line sung through a leslie in second chorus. I bought Friends and Sunflower immediately and have been crazy about em' since. I went backwards as far as their discography, I think it was a good way to see the devolution of sorts from the more complex to the surfin' tunes. I love it all. Even the '80s stuff.

Best of the Beach Boys, Vol 1. That is when the snowball started rolling downhill.

Hey that's cool. So there is other people out there who were turned onto the Beach Boys from that movie!!