The classic song that The Beach Boys nearly binned: “Bizarre”
The world is full of what-ifs. What if certain people never met, robbing us of some of the world’s best bands? What if a certain couple never got together, meaning the inspiration for a timeless anthem was never there? Or in this instance, what if Brian Wilson had bowed to the will of his record label, sacrificing one of The Beach Boys’ biggest hits?
The what-ifs surrounding label involvement are numerous. Seemingly every artist has a story just like this one where the suits pushed back against their artistry, failing to see its worth or simply not thinking it would be good business. Queen were almost blocked from making ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ for that reason. That’s why Prince rebelled against his label so intensely that he changed his name to a symbol. It’s also why so many artists often hit a point where they start their own record label, like The Rolling Stones did in 1970, or like The Beatles did with Apple Records, ensuring that no outsider input could fuck with their decision making.
Experimentation is often the marker of a great artist, but it’s not trustworthy business. Experimentation doesn’t always sell well or perform well on charts, so for labels simply there to make money, it’s a worrying thing when their artist starts to get a bit crazy in the studio.
But surely by the time The Beach Boys were messing about with theramins during the making of ‘Good Vibrations’, their label, Capitol, should’ve been more than used to it. As Brian Wilson started making the psychedelic anthem, layering it with both classical instruments and more experimental, electronic additions, surely that wasn’t as wild as when he was frantically producing a whole album or trying to get the perfect samples of train sounds and animal noises for Pet Sounds?
However, even Wilson seemed to see ‘Good Vibrations’ as almost a step too far. “I had no idea it would be a hit record. We weren’t even going to release it because it was so bizarre,” he said, initially blind to the banger he’d just made as he was too busy also being distracted by how weird it was.
It still is weird. The 1966 single isn’t easy to categorise. “Nobody ever really called ‘Good Vibrations’ a rock and roll record, but it was, it really rocked,” Wilson said, but as the song meanders through different tempos and sections, it’s easy to see why people had a hard time with it.
Their label especially did, as well as having a hard time with the length. Especially for an act like The Beach Boys, who really still captured that ultimate pop-rock radio audience, the run time of three minutes and 35 seconds was just too long when stations still had strict rules. Always keen to simply make life easier and business smoother, their label was ready to pass it up as Wilson recalled, “Our record company said, ‘It’s too long’. The time on it was three minutes and 35 seconds, and our company said, ‘We’re gonna go with ‘Help Me Ronda’.” The story gets a little confused there, given that ‘Help Me Ronda’ was released a year before in 1965, before ‘Good Vibrations’ was recorded, but either way, it seems that Capitol wanted a more clear-cut hit.
Wilson and the band stood by the track, though, despite also admitting, “It was a bizarre record”. They simply asked that their team give it a chance. “After we got people over to our houses to listen, people were flipping. They’re going, ‘woah, thats a great fucking record’,” the musician remembered, which is basically how everyone who’s ever heard the track for the first time also reacts.
It’s how the general public reacted, too, despite Capitol’s worry. Following the success of Pet Sounds, the track was a hit with instant acclaim, hit the top of the charts and endured as a totally timeless song that still sounds as bizarre and brilliant today.
