The three classic songs by The Beach Boys inspired by LSD
When thinking of bands synonymous with drug culture, The Beach Boys aren’t usually the first to come to mind. Their early image—sunkissed California boys with clean-cut charm—has left them frozen in cultural history as wholesome surfers, singing about taking their “best girl” out on the town or daydreaming about classic Americana romance. In reality, however, the 1960s group was deeply entrenched in the psychedelic trip of the era.
Like in the story of many famed bands, the role that drugs played cannot be understated. For some, that’s a tragic tale as many bands have been torn apart as addiction ravaged their members and interband relationships. But for some, certain substances unlocked new and exciting gateways, opening up the doors of their musical brains to new possibilities.
The dawn of LSD especially completely changed the look and sound of rock and roll. As the drug became popular in the 1960s in a period of wild, unbridled experimentation as countless hippies took part in acid tests, the era gained that psychedelic, spiralling look that has forever remained in history’s rose-tinted retrospection. In music, bands seemed to take a trip and emerge in a bold new shape. Without the drug, The Beatles would never have made Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, psychedelia as a genre simply wouldn’t exist, and countless other ‘60s rock bands would never have gone any further than just being a good enough classic rock troupe.
For The Beach Boys, without LSD, they probably would have remained as a radio-ready, vanilla rock and roll group that parents tolerated and square kids loved, singing along to ‘Surfin’ USA’. But in 1965, Brian Wilson took a trip and decided to immerse himself in the world of the new favourite drug of the countercultural world. From then on, his artistry and the band were never the same. “I took LSD and it just tore my head off,” he said about the drug.
First came ‘California Girls’. During one of his first trips, he found himself at the piano, hearing the song’s piano riff in his head. Immediately, there is something different about the track. It’s no longer the simple, easy tune they used to create, as the instrument holds a lot more dissonance and layering, with the drug seeming to demand more texture.
But really, the impact of LSD on the band didn’t come to its full fruition until 1966, when their album Pet Sounds saw Wilson soar to a whole new realm. “At first, my creativity increased more than I could believe,” he said, with this album being a prime example of that. “On the downside, it fucked with my brain,” he added, but let’s just forget that for a moment.
The entirety of Pet Sounds is the product of acid as the album exists as one continuous piece as if the band places a tab on the listeners tongue and invited them to float through a trip with them. But ‘I Know There’s an Answer’ is the album’s ode to the substance, originally titled ‘Hang On to Your Ego’ as a nod to Wilson’s experience of ego death while dabbling in the substance.
The first song that undeniably would not exist without LSD is obviously ‘Good Vibrations’, a track with so much hazy energy that even the most sober person would be left feeling a little dizzy after a listen. First conceived during a trip, Wilson put every effort into replicating the experience in the studio. “I’d written it five months earlier and imagined the grand, Spector-like production while on an LSD trip I’d described so enthusiastically for [guitarist] Al [Jardine],” he said. Released in 1966, perfectly timed for the mid-60s acid boom, the band created an anthem for trips worldwide as Wilson said, “Instinctively, I knew it was the right song at the right time”.
