So Murry Wilson is no longer the Beach Boys’ manager. (see previous post.) What did that mean for Brian?
Following Brian Wilson’s heated in-studio confrontation with his father Murry, the Beach Boys went on to finish “I Get Around,” the basic concept of which was an improved iteration of “Fun, Fun, Fun.” In “Fun, Fun, Fun,” the Beach Boys used the Chuck Berry template to tell a story about having fun in the car. This time, Brian constructed something that was having fun in the car; what the kids were only hearing about second-hand in the earlier song they would now experience, or feel, for themselves.
“I Get Around” kicks off with a bass-note pickup that replicates the sound of a key being turned in a car’s ignition—the engine turns over and starts. The four-bar vocal introduction (conceived by Mike Love and apparently inspired by the Regents’ “Barbara Ann”) follows in the tradition of earlier tunes like “Surfin’ Safari” and “Catch a Wave”—it “hooks” the listener with a declarative vocal statement of the theme. The rest of the song features the classic Chuck Berry rhythm, trademark group harmonies, featured vocal parts for Mike and Brian, some well-placed handclaps and a guitar solo from Carl Wilson. The song somehow transmits the feeling of acceleration, as the arrangement transforms a drag race into music—the vocals in the chorus shifting through the gears from first to fourth, with the car hitting top speed and winning the race. The song pulls up short a couple of times at the stoplight—enough time for some good-natured boasting—then speeds off again when the light turns green. The overall arrangement purrs along seamlessly, so that listeners experience the song as a logical, inevitable whole.
With this one record, the Beach Boys both responded to Beatlemania and updated their sound. Yes, it was a car song, but a very sophisticated and smart one. Brian was doing something new with the Beach Boys’ strengths and basic style. “I Get Around” was released as a single in May (with “Don’t Worry Baby” on the B-side) and by July would become the Beach Boys’ first No. 1 hit.
There's no way to represent on paper, with current notation, the lyrics, melody, rhythm, or arrangement of this song and come remotely close to what the listener actually hears and experiences. And of course it also flies in the face of conventional wisdom that anything so wildly experimental and avant-garde could be so popular, so dumb and friendly and instantly accessible. Unselfconsciousness is the key.
—Paul Williams, on “I Get Around”
On “I Get Around,” life and music seem to have been in synch. The song takes place in the same cruising milieu of “Fun, Fun, Fun” but this time, the father-character doesn’t even rate a mention. The female protagonist is gone too; the chick in the Thunderbird challenged her father in “Fun, Fun, Fun” whereas the boys of “I Get Around” have already won before the song even starts. “I Get Around” is how to do a car song about freedom-seeking guys. And for Brian, it turned out to be a song that offended his abuser-manager.
Brian might not have ever viewed the concept and lyrics of “I Get Around” as having any special relevance to his life. In later years, he would remember the song as simply being “about going places, making good money, going around from town to town.” At the time he produced it, all he was trying to do was make the best record he could, expanding the creative boundaries of the car-song while remaining true to the Beach Boys’ image and the precepts of “teenage music.” And he succeeded. “I Get Around” was great, and as of the time of its recording, everybody—the other Beach Boys, Capitol Records, and Murry too—had every reason to be delighted with the tune and optimistic about is prospects. Yet the song stuck in Murry’s craw. Murry took its lyrics and message more seriously than anybody else.
Even though lead vocalists Brian and Mike adopt the first-person singular on “I Get Around,” the normal listener doesn’t have to believe they’re singing about their own lives. It would have been a rare person who actually believed that the Beach Boys frequently piled into Mike’s hot rod to cruise the boulevard or go from town to town, winning street races. But what Murry heard was his son Brian singing about himself, boasting about his current standing in real-life. On the chorus, Brian confidently celebrates his mobility (“I get around”), composure (“I’m a real cool head”), and independent financial success (“I’m makin’ real good bread”). In short, the song openly celebrated three things about Brian that Murry would never accept. From Murry’s viewpoint, “I Get Around” was an attack. Threatening, at the emotional level. So he tried to block its creation, ordered Brian to cancel the recording session, and otherwise tried to undermine Brian’s confidence. Murry did what he had to, but he couldn’t help himself. He overreached, and ended up forfeiting the managerial position.1
And so, Brian prevailed: Murry was stripped of his “manager” title, and he was no longer welcome in the recording studio. (At least for the time being.) Was that all? Was it that simple?
In 1976, after the Beach Boys’ star had fully ascended, fallen and then risen again, a New York radio disk jockey asked Dennis Wilson a good question: How do you fire your dad?
Dennis deflected: “You say, ‘Dad, I’ll see you later,’” was his reply. Maybe it would have been too complicated for Dennis to explain. Or too personal a matter to be discussed on the radio. Or maybe, there was in fact no answer to the question at all, because the Beach Boys in fact never fired their dad. At most, what they had done was fire a manager who also happened to be their dad. “Firing their dad”—as father, not just as manager—would have been an entirely different thing. And also, practically impossible.
In this pie-in-the-sky scenario, Brian would steadily expunge Murry from all facets of his life: as a musician, businessman, and human being. Given how Murry had treated Brian, this would have been a morally defensible outcome, for what had occurred between them over the years was far outside the bounds of reasonable parental discipline; easily distinguishable from the natural and often unavoidable conflict that typifies father-son relationships. For Brian to do this properly—to adequately break free from Murry—would necessarily have been grim, arduous and painful. And tragic. It would likely have destroyed the Beach Boys and ripped the Wilson family apart. Therefore, in the real world there would always be a place for Murry somewhere in Brian’s life.
As Brian has acknowledged, life in Hawthorne was the only life he (and Dennis, and Carl) ever knew. Murry’s version of fatherhood and Audree’s version of motherhood were therefore all they ever had; there was no other reference point. Like everyone, the brothers entered the world requiring care, protection, and respect and were naturally oriented, as a matter of biological practicality, to remain attached to their parents. During the formative years of their childhood, running away from home was not a viable strategy. Coping, adapting and rationalizing were the more realistic options. Now, as young adults, it would have been miraculous if the brothers could turn on a dime and suddenly recognize that they no longer needed to follow the rules of childhood in order to live. The Wilson boys owed Murry nothing, yet they had been raised to feel indebted to him, even as he repeatedly beat the hell out of Brian and Dennis and raised Carl as a powerless witness to unpredictable violence.
And even if the brothers wanted to drop their father (they didn’t), Murry was already lodged, like a cancer, within the Beach Boys’ inner circle. Brian’s personal finances were tethered to Murry via the Sea of Tunes publishing company, which Murry controlled. Indeed, one of the reasons Sea of Tunes existed in the first place was because Brian shared a very strong bond with his father. There had been two decades of ceaseless oversight, suppression, musical growth, sadism, “favored treatment,” limits on freedom, special gifts, obscene boundary violations, guilt-tripping and other mind games. The result was a psychological merger of father and son; a kind of codependency. Murry was planted in Brian’s psyche; the only question was how deep. And finally, Murry was the husband of the boys’ beloved mother. Murry and Audree were a package deal, as parents tend to be. If the brothers wanted a relationship with the angel, they would have to accommodate the demon.
The Beach Boys’ day-to-day bookkeeping and tour management once handled by Murry was passed on to the accounting firm which also handled the books for Murry’s Sea of Tunes publishing entity and the machinery business that he owned (and was soon to officially retire from). Murry retained his role as song publisher, and continued to pull other business levers behind the scenes. He kept his audience with Brian and would continue to offer advice, opinions, and put-downs about Brian’s evolving music, the commercial success of which provided Murry’s considerable wealth. Murry would even maintain his presence in the recording studio from time to time.
Normally, getting fired means you’re out on your ass and have to find another way to feed yourself. This never happened to Murry. So when Brian said, “you’re fired,” it amounted to little more than a shot across the bow—a warning that from now on, Murry had to be more careful about how he behaved. Considering the vast territory Brian would need to cover if he was ever going to be free, this didn’t amount to much.
Nevertheless, it was better than nothing. The studio control that Brian once had to share with Capitol Records and his father now belonged to him exclusively. “I Get Around” was a harbinger of what he would be doing with this additional measure of creative license.
By this point Brian had already heard the Phil Spector production style on girl-group singles such as “Be My Baby,” performed by The Ronettes. After hearing that and other Spector productions, Brian became a lifelong champion of the enormous, overwhelming sound of Spector’s recordings. Phil Spector took snappy and relatively simple pop tunes with teen-oriented lyrics and pumped them up by blending guitars, drums, horns, percussion, etc. to create an orchestral feel. He employed seasoned studio musicians to get the sound he wanted. It was rock ‘n’ roll, but might be more accurately described as symphonic pop; Spector wasn’t producing songs so much as creating song productions—the song wasn’t really finished until it was produced and had become a record. Notwithstanding the talent of the singers, musicians and other collaborators, Spector, as producer, was star of the show. His recordings were monophonic, which meant that Brian, with his one functioning ear, could fully absorb everything as Spector intended it to be heard.
Although Phil Spector had attended Fairfax High School and was now recording in Hollywood, he was born in the Bronx and lived his formative years there. He was a creature of New York’s “ethnic” borough culture (hence his natural affinity for the Ramones later on) and it might be said that his finished recordings comprised a stew of Black, Irish, Jewish, Italian and Latin ingredients. His records transmit the feel of crowded spaces and hard city surfaces. Spector’s female vocalists urgently belt the songs out as if they were singing from an open apartment window, needing to be heard over the street noise. (All this could be why Spector’s records seem naturally suited for use in movies like Mean Streets and Goodfellas.)
What Phil Spector could not provide is delicacy, lightness, and a sense of space. There is joy in his records, but beauty is more scarce. Nor did Spector have at his disposal the one-of-a-kind vocal lineup of the Southern California-bred Beach Boys. And as a man, Spector was warped and tormented, unable or unwilling to convey introspection, respite or a feeling of sanctuary in music.
Brian Wilson, though, could do all of these things. The Beach Boys’ Shut Down Volume 2 album had already shown the Spector influence in places. And recordings like “Don’t Worry Baby” and “I Get Around” may have been the earliest indication that Brian was taking the Spector method and doing something different with it.
Brian always thought that he was somehow inferior to Phil Spector. I always thought it was absolutely the other way around. Phil Spector was very talented—crazy—but he had this layered sound thing. But Brian took that and used it in a delicate way. So it became beautiful. So it wasn’t just angry. Phil’s thing was anger. And Brian was always looking for love.
—Terry Melcher
Continue reading here: Part 20 of A History of Brian Wilson
Go back to preceding chapter in series, Part 18
Selected References for Part 18
Brown, Mick. Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector. New York: Knopf, 2007.
Cohn, Nik. “Phil Spector.” In Anthony DeCurtis, James Henke and Holly George-Warren, eds. The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll. New York: Random House, 1992.
“Dennis Wilson—Pete Fornatale Interview 1976.” At YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVItbEJBkJM (posted by “steel7866”)
Endless Harmony: The Beach Boys Story. Directed by Alan Boyd. VH1 Television/Delilah Films, 2000.
Granata, Charles L. Wouldn’t It Be Nice: Brian Wilson and the Making of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Chicago: A Cappella Books, 2003.
Hoskyns, Barney. “The Making of ‘I Get Around.’” Rolling Stone, July 9, 23, 1998.
Lambert, Philip. Inside The Music of Brian Wilson: The Songs, Sounds and Influences of the Beach Boys' Founding Genius. New York: Continuum International, 2007.
Leaf, David. The Beach Boys and the California Myth. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978.
Lloyd, Robert. “Sea Changes: Brian Wilson and the Cosmic-Baroque Doo-Wop.” L.A. Style, November 1987. Available at: http://houseofhere.com/features.html (last accessed September 8, 2014)
Stebbins, Jon. The Real Beach Boy: Dennis Wilson. Toronto: ECW Press, 2000.
__________. The Beach Boys FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About America’s Band. Milwaukee: Backbeat Books, 2011.
White, Timothy. The Nearest Faraway Place: Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys and the Southern California Experience. New York: Henry Holt, 1994.
Williams, Paul. Brian Wilson & The Beach Boys: How Deep Is The Ocean? New York: Omnibus Press, 1997.
Wilson, Brian, with Ben Greenman. I Am Brian Wilson. Boston: Da Capo Press, 2016.
Yet it’s possible that Murry had effectively lost the managerial position even before the “I Get Around” tracking session on April 2, and that he already knew his time was up. If on the other hand he arrived at the session believing himself to be manager-in-good-standing, he would have still known that the band wanted to fire him (based on their earlier letter of termination and/or Brian and Mike’s effort to fire him in person at the Wilson home). Given this knowledge, what was Murry trying to accomplish during the session? To win his job back? To put himself on an improved footing with the band and get them to reconsider their decision? Obviously not. It seems more likely that he was simply attempting to forcefully wrest control away from Brian or perhaps just foment chaos in the studio by causing a scene. He needn’t have been fully conscious of his motives.