The song Brian Wilson wants The Beach Boys to be remembered for: “I’m still really proud”
When you’ve been blessed with an unmatched songwriting ability like that of Brian Wilson, it would be perfectly understandable if you were proud of virtually everything you’ve ever produced. While his work with the Beach Boys did admittedly have peaks and troughs, the superlative quality of the best material he penned for the group should do enough to diminish the prominence of his career lowlights, and his status as a genius shouldn’t be overshadowed by a few forgettable performances.
If you’re like me, a staunch defender of The Beach Boys who is willing to look beyond their occasional missteps, then you’ll know how difficult it is to pick out a career highlight from their catalogue. Do you plump for an obvious pick such as ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ or ‘God Only Knows’, or do you pick out a slightly more obscure track like ‘Wonderful’? Do you want to even stretch as far as to say that Wilson’s botched 1977 release, Adult/Child, has some masterpieces such as ‘Life is For the Living’ on it? It’s a tricky decision to make, and would undoubtedly be even harder for the artist himself to pick out.
He may well be equally proud of all of his works, but at the same time, many artists are their own worst critics. Considering how much of a perfectionist he was and how he would painstakingly obsess over the most minute details, he probably considers some of his best works to be in dire need of improvement, or has plenty of songs that he’d readily disown.
That being said, the often-criticised early material of The Beach Boys, while commercially successful, is seen by many to only be a shadow of what the group would go on to achieve with more expansive records like Pet Sounds and Surf’s Up. They may have been true to themselves when singing about fast cars and living it up on the beach, but the lyrical content is often perceived to be juvenile compared to the maturity on show on later releases.
However, there is plenty of gold in the group’s early years, and the song Wilson wishes for the Beach Boys to be remembered by is a hit from 1965, which he believes to be a perfect encapsulation of what the band have always been about. With irresistible melodic work, close harmonies and vibrant pop production, Wilson considers ‘California Girls’ to be the finest work he has ever put his name to, and honestly, it’s hard to argue with such a selection.
In a 2011 interview with Goldmine, Wilson explained how he wrote the song in the first place, and why he still thinks of it as being his greatest achievement. “I came up with the introduction first,” Wilson recalled. “I’m still really proud of that introduction. It has a classical feel. I wrote the song ‘California Girls’ in the same key as the introduction. It took me some time. I wanted to write a song that had a traditional country and western left hand piano riff, like an old country song from the early ’50s. I wanted to get something that had kind of a jumpy feeling to it in the verses.”
While the song isn’t laced with the psychedelic splendour that characterised the music Wilson would write for the band shortly after, ‘California Girls’ is a prime example of how Wilson was truly untouchable even when it came to the simple elements of crafting a song. ‘California Girls’ is arguably a precursor to the more ambitious works, and you can hear traces of the more complex arrangements and structures that he would later employ here. Considering he was only 22 when he wrote it, that alone ought to be seen as a triumph, and it serves as a perfect introduction to his mastery of pop songwriting.
