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The Beach Boys, 'Good Vibrations'

Writers: Brian Wilson, Mike Love Producer: Wilson Released: Oct. '66, Capitol 14 weeks; No. 1

"It scared me, the word 'vi-brations,'" Brian Wilson once said, remembering how, when he was a boy, his mother, Audree, tried to explain why dogs barked at some people and not others. "A dog would pick up vibrations from these people that you can't see but you can feel. And the same thing happened with people." "Good Vibrations" harnessed that energy and turned it into eternal sunshine. "This is a very spiritual song," Wilson said after its release, "and I want it to give off good vibrations."

Wilson, then 24, also had another goal in mind: "I said, 'This is going to be better than "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'.'"

Wilson was still working on his long-playing magnum opus, Pet Sounds, when he started "Good Vibrations" late on the night of February 17th, 1966, at Gold Star Recorders in Los Angeles. During the next seven months, in four studios, at a cost of more than $50,000 (at that point the greatest sum ever spent on a single), Wilson built "Good Vibrations" in sections, coloring the mood swings with locomotive cello, saloon piano and the spectral wail of a theremin. "We didn't think about doing it in pieces at first," Wilson says now, "but after the first few bars in the first verse, we realized that this was going to be a different kind of record." Very different. Wilson — free to experiment while the other Beach Boys were on tour — could not stop wrestling with combinations of instruments and rhythmic approaches. One discarded version of the song had an R&B backbeat.

"Good Vibrations" became the Beach Boys' third Number One hit, but it was a short window of glory — for the Beach Boys commercially, for Wilson creatively and emotionally. The song was intended to appear on the group's Smile album, but Wilson — suffering from depression and battling the other Beach Boys over the group's direction — abandoned Smile in May 1967, eventually completing the record, and performing it on tour, in 2004. "'Good Vibrations' now is the best it's ever been," Wilson said that year. "It went to Number One in 1966, and now we get standing ovations every time we play it live. It's incredible to me."

Appears on: Smiley Smile/Wild Honey (Capitol) 

RELATED:

• The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time: The Beach Boys

• The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time: Brian Wilson

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