“These rinky dink surf songs”: The tracks Brian Wilson was embarrassed to play
It’s inevitable that music tastes change over time. After all, while the rock and pop canons may seem like their own microcosmic worlds, whether we like it or not, they are intrinsically linked to geography and politics and the shifts in society at large, not to mention the fact that for artists playing the long game, they’re unlikely to want to spend decades upon decades rehashing the same old thing. Just take Brian Wilson as the case study.
Although The Beach Boys’ frontman has endured a lot of upheaval in his life over the years, on a purely sonic level, the changing of his musical tides was an almost natural occurrence, given the niche starting point from which he began his career. ‘Surfin’ USA’ and shiny pop may have been all well and good in the early part of the 1960s, but two decades down the line, after the thrashing of punk and glam rock had had their moments, and the new wave was set to enter the sphere, suddenly The Beach Boys’ classics were old news.
It was an understandable frustration for a musician so prolific as Wilson, who became synonymous with one surface-level sound when his real skillset encompassed much more psychedelic curiosities. Especially entering into the 1980s, when the singer’s mental health struggles were at their peak, the singer was keen to explore a much more expansive sonic world than the parameters of his previous songbook would allow, leaving him increasingly disillusioned.
The crux of this annoyance came to the fore in an interview when he claimed he was “embarrassed” to still be performing some of The Beach Boys’ former golden hits, some 20 years after they first hit the airwaves. He then continued to blast his own band by saying: “The group is out of sight. Our shows are rinky dink, you know what I mean? We do these concerts, and we do ‘409’ or ‘Surfin’ Safari’ – we do all these rinky dink surf songs, which embarrasses me, and they’re embarrassed!”
Despite feeling ashamed of still dining out on the successes of 20 years prior, Wilson conceded that there was no way of avoiding his now-hated “surf songs”.
“We have to [continue performing them],” he admitted, “Because that’s what made us famous”. As such, although the heights of 1962 were a shining high of beach soundtracks and teenage love, in Wilson’s eyes, they were nothing more than a naïve melody of happier times that, during his moments of darkness, he’d surely rather forget.
This was especially pertinent to Wilson as an individual, as he became increasingly estranged from his brotherly bandmates and, in the midst of various psychological interventions, set out on creating his own solo ventures. One of the most prolific results of these years was ‘Rio Grande’ from the album Smile, an eight-minute odyssey of Western adventures that truly put the virtuoso’s skills to the test, as a far cry from anything surf pop could muster.
It just goes to show that, above all else, it was freedom from the shackles of expectation and conformity that truly pushed Wilson’s life and career back from the brink, in a way that could never have happened if he had simply continued doling out the same old cringe-inducing tunes. It took a lot of work for him to get there, but the results of The Beach Boys’ leader’s post-surfing explorations were no cause for embarrassment.
