Ever since The Seaside Boys had a Prime 20 US hit with their second single, “Surfin’ Safari,” the group had been below stress to ship. Their distinctive tackle rock’n’roll – one half Chuck Berry, one half The 4 Freshmen, blended with lyrics that launched the world to the West Coast’s browsing and automotive racing cultures – made them a nationwide sensation in a single day. “There was a huge demand for The Beach Boys,” singer and co-writer Mike Love recollects right now. “As soon as we did ‘Surfin’ Safari’ – and then, by ’63, ‘Surfin’ USA’, that was a big record… Once we did ‘Surfin’ Safari’ and we started touring, and came out with our first album – featuring us on the little vehicle in the sand, in Malibu, looking out to sea all dressed in our Pendleton shirts. From there on The Beach Boys were as popular as anybody could possibly hope to be.”
Such was the demand for brand spanking new songs that the group issued three albums in 1963 alone, the second of which, Surfer Woman, stays a excessive level from their early days. Taken throughout the identical picture shoot that yielded the art work for Surfin’ Safari, the duvet presents the group in a well-known pose, although the album noticed them department out into newer territory – not least within the title observe. The Seaside Boys’ first out-and-out ballad, it was additionally one of many first clutch of demos that received them signed to Capitol Data in 1962, and have become their second Prime 10 US single with ease.
“I remember [‘Surfer Girl’] quite well,” Love informed uDiscover in 2016. “My cousin Brian and I are just a year apart and we shared a lot of high-school experiences. And one of his high-school experiences was falling in love with a girl who was literally the inspiration for that song, way back when he wrote it, driving down Hawthorne Boulevard.” On the album it’s joined by “In My Room” to make a pair which Love rightly declares are “extraordinarily beautiful ballads.”
“One of the secret ingredients of The Beach Boys, I honestly believe, is the love of creating those harmonies together,” Love says. “The special resonance that comes from really loving what you’re doing.” Love’s household, alongside together with his cousins, Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson, usually held recitals at residence, at which the boys would hone their expertise singing doo-wop songs, Everly Brothers and 4 Freshmen hits. “We grew up together with a tremendous amount of music surrounding us,” Love recollects, including, “A family tradition became a profession by virtue of the fact that my cousin Brian and I were able to craft a lot of songs together that resonated with many people around the world.”
Certainly, Surfer Woman did higher than its predecessor within the UK, the place it climbed to No.13, barely behind its No.7 peak within the US. Amazingly, although, “In My Room,” now hailed as one of many group’s best moments, was tucked away as a B-side in 1963, whereas the album observe “Catch A Wave” didn’t make a single launch in any respect. “It’s totally right in the genre of early surfing songs,” Love notes, including that it’s “a fantastic song” that he all the time thought ought to have been an A-side, together with one other catchy browsing reduce from the album, “Hawaii.”
These songs are a part of the rationale why Surfer Woman stays such a gem from this very early interval within the group’s profession. For many who solely know The Seaside Boys’ hits, listening to the album for the primary time is like discovering there have been a number of extra, able to be launched as singles in some parallel universe.
Within the coming months, The Seaside Boys continued to develop the 2 strands of their early materials: the street-level songs (“Little Deuce Coupe,” “Fun Fun Fun”) and the ballads at which they had been turning into more and more deft (“The Warmth Of The Sun”).
They arrived simply in time, too. Signing to Capitol, the group helped take the label in a brand new course, turning into its first rock’n’roll act simply as The Beatles had been poised to land on US soil (and subsequently be a part of the Capitol roster themselves). “I remember walking into Capitol Records and looking at the posters on the wall, and the gold albums and stuff – I’m talking about Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, and The Kingston Trio,” Love says, including that “it was awe-inspiring” to enter the enduring constructing “that was shaped like a stack of records”.
In virtually no time in any respect, The Seaside Boys added their very own data to that stack – a variety of timeless music that has managed to span generations and transcend cultures, rising from its beginnings within the southwest metropolis of Hawthorne, California, to change into a really international phenomenon.
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