Episode 117: "Don't Worry Baby" by the Beach Boys

Episode one hundred and seventeen of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Don't Worry Baby" by the Beach Boys, and how the years 1963 and 1964 saw a radical evolution in the sound and subject matter of the Beach Boys' work. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.

Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "You're No Good" by the Swinging Blue Jeans.

Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/

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ERRATA: I say that the Surfin' USA album was released only four months after Surfin' Safari. It was actually over five months. Also, for some reason I pronounce Nik Venet's name as if he were French here. I believe that's incorrect and his name is actually pronounced “Vennit”, though I'm not 100% sure.

More importantly, I say that "Sweet Little Sixteen" wasn't a big hit, when of course it made number two on the charts. 

 

Resources

There is no Mixcloud this week, because there were too many Beach Boys songs in the episode.

I used many resources for this episode, most of which will be used in future Beach Boys episodes too. It's difficult to enumerate everything here, because I have been an active member of the Beach Boys fan community for twenty-four years, and have at times just used my accumulated knowledge for this. But the resources I list here are ones I've checked for specific things.

Becoming the Beach Boys by James B. Murphy is an in-depth look at the group's early years, up to the end of 1963.

Stephen McParland has published many, many books on the California surf and hot-rod music scenes, including several on both the Beach Boys and Gary Usher. His books can be found at https://payhip.com/CMusicBooks

Andrew Doe's Bellagio 10452 site is an invaluable resource.

Jon Stebbins' The Beach Boys FAQ is a good balance between accuracy and readability. Stebbins also co-wrote The Lost Beach Boy, David Marks' autobiography.

And Philip Lambert's Inside the Music of Brian Wilson is an excellent, though sadly out of print, musicological analysis of Wilson's music from 1962 through 67.

The Beach Boys' Morgan recordings and all the outtakes from them can be found on this 2-CD set.

As a good starting point for the Beach Boys' music, I would recommend this budget-priced three-CD set, which has a surprisingly good selection of their material on it.

Transcript

Today, we're going to take our second look at the Beach Boys, and we're going to look at their evolution through 1963 and 1964, as they responded to the threat from the Beatles by turning to ever more sophisticated music, even as they went through a variety of personal crises. We're going to look at a period in which they released four albums a year, had three lineup changes, and saw their first number one – and at a song which, despite being a B-side, regularly makes lists of the best singles of all time. We're going to look at “Don't Worry Baby”:

[Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Don't Worry Baby"]

When we left the Beach Boys, they had just secured a contract with Capitol Records, and released their first national hit, "Surfin' Safari" backed with "409". Since then we've also seen Brian Wilson working with several songwriting collaborators to write hits for Jan and Dean. But now we need to double ba


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