Stevie Nicks picks out the “quintessential” Beach Boys song
If you asked a member of the general public to pick out the quintessential Beach Boys song, it’s highly probable that they’d name one of the band’s biggest hits – perhaps the wistful ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ or the unmatched ‘God Only Knows’. Of course, ‘Good Vibrations’ and ‘Surfin’ U.S.A’ are also worthy contenders, well-known hits that encapsulated their spellbindingly sunny sound. But Stevie Nicks was never one to follow the crowd.
Forgoing the band’s sunniest, most successful songs, the Fleetwood Mac vocalist once stated that the slightly more obscure ‘Sail On, Sailor’ was, to her, the “quintessential” Beach Boys song. Featuring on their 1973 record, Holland, and released as a single in the same year, ‘Sail On, Sailor’ featured Blondie Chaplin on vocals. “I sailed an ocean, unsettled ocean, through restful waters and deep commotion, often frightened, unenlightened, sail on, sail on, sailor,” he declares in the cautiously optimistic track.
In a quote on Brian Wilson’s official website, Nicks declared that the song has the power to “make you think, ‘I need to go get on a boat and go out to sea,’ and I happen to love to sail”. Despite her love for the track and its themes, The Beach Boys co-founder and pop pioneer Brian Wilson previously shared his dislike for ‘Sail On, Sailor’.
Wilson once named the track as the only Beach Boys song that he “absolutely” didn’t like at all. He stated, “I never liked ‘Sailor On, Sailor’… I thought the lyrics were very, very weird. The lyrics didn’t… make any sense. I thought that, ‘Sail on, sail on, sailor’ – that part was good – but the lyrics were so… off the wall kind of lyrics. I never could get with those lyrics.”
He continued to explain the making of the track, sharing: “I wrote it one night, and I had some friends over, and this guy named… Ray Kennedy wrote the original lyrics. And then somebody, somewhere wrote another set of lyrics, and I never found out who they were… I never found out who wrote the actual lyrics to the song on the record…”
In other instances, however, Wilson has previously suggested that the track is one of his favourites. Despite the songwriter’s seemingly conflicted feelings on ‘Sail On, Sailor’, Nicks firmly believed it was one of the band’s most important releases. She continued to explain the mammoth impact of the Beach Boys in general, stating, “A lot of the big groups really did play off The Beach Boys”.
Noting that many artists were inspired by their “intense vocal background parts”, she suggests, “They were the reason why a lot of us sang and put stuff together the way we did. The Beach Boys are hugely important to all of us.” It’s certainly not an overstatement to say that The Beach Boys-inspired an immeasurable number of artists that came after them and that they continue to do so through their sunny discography.
Listen back to ‘Sail On, Sailor’, the “quintessential” Beach Boys song, according to Stevie Nicks, below.
