The exact moment The Beach Boys lost their innocence: “Such a beautiful song”
Yes, The Beach Boys loved to write a good song about surfing, girls and cars, but if you think that’s the extent of how deep they could go, then you’ve clearly not spent much time diving into the depths of their catalogue.
As much as these were the three primary topics of interest on their earliest material, their limited scope was only really characteristic of this period, and after a while, Brian Wilson would begin to explore a greater range of emotions and philosophical musings as he began to mature as a person and a songwriter, only occasionally delving into these tried and tested themes the further they went into their career.
Perhaps their coastal moniker and insistence on being photographed holding surfboards so frequently is what makes people assume that these were the only subjects the band were interested or even capable of writing about, but one particular song from early on in their career was evidence of their proficiency in poring over deeper subject matter, with its origins having come from a place of tragedy rather than joyful innocence.
On November 21st, 1963, Wilson and his cousin, Mike Love, met up at Wilson’s house to work on material together, and while many of the songs that they conjured up during this period didn’t do much to persuade audiences that they’d moved beyond surfing as a pillar of their identity (see: ‘Surfin’’, ‘Surfin’ Safari’ and ‘Surfin’ USA’), ‘The Warmth of the Sun’ boasted a maturity that had been absent from the rest of their output.
Eschewing the usual talking points, Love keenly asserted during a 2017 interview that the track saw them tapping into something else, and that the events around them caused the track to develop an even greater poignancy shortly after it was finished. “For our band, the song we were writing offered a window into some of the lyrics and sounds that would come later in the decade,” he claimed, before stating: “In just a few hours, this song would take on an entirely different meaning.”
The following day, news would break that US President John F Kennedy had been assassinated while on a visit to Dallas, Texas, and much like the rest of the country, Wilson and Love found themselves in a state of shock and mourning. This unprecedented event sent shockwaves around the world and took many people a long time to heal from, and Love noted how it was eventually recontextualised when they came to commit it to tape.
“It’s just such a beautiful song,” he continued, “And the interesting thing about it was I remember waking up that morning to the news that President Kennedy had been taken to the hospital in Dallas. A month later, we recorded it, and it was charged with the extra emotion of that terrible event that had happened.”
Wilson also commented on how the opening line, “What good is the dawn that grows into day?” was a perfect way to sum up the hopelessness that was felt in the aftermath of the event, but doesn’t dwell too much on the sorrow and misery that was spread as a result of Kennedy’s assassination.
It may not be one of the group’s most celebrated songs, but it certainly marks a major turning point in their output, making room for the band to further explore a deeper range of emotions on their later works.
“For a bunch of carefree guys in our early twenties,” Love added, “Our innocence was lost.”
