Surf's Up (song)

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When I was in their picture everything was whirling in a big flux. "Wilder women!" we were calling. "Madder wine!" And I came up with that title, it was so simple, in the context of the excitement it seemed obvious: "Surf's Up."

—Van Dyke Parks, 1971 [22]

Singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb interpreted the song as "a premonition of what was going to happen to our generation and ... to our music—that some great tragedy that we could absolutely not imagine was about to befall our world." [23] Academic Larry Starr wrote, "Van Dyke Parks’s poetic and allusive lyrics articulate the progression from a condition of disillusionment with a decadent and materialistic culture to the glimpse of a possibility for hope and renewal. This is all conveyed via an abundance of musical references and imagery." [24] Lambert said that the song prophesies an optimism for those who can capture the innocence of youth. [25] In the view of journalist Domenic Priore, the song was "a plea for the establishment to consider the wisdom coming out of youth culture in 1966." [26]

Starr further described it as "a very serious song, with an underlying somber tone for much of its duration that is leavened by wordplay ... and the near-miraculous turn toward hope as it ends. Its dark atmosphere is perhaps its greatest deviation, among many, from the features typical of the Beach Boys’ work". [24] Journalist Paul Williams interpreted the song as partly a commentary on the band's musical legacy, writing that the moment in which Wilson sings the line "surf's up" is "a pivot on which everything that's come before in the song wheels and turns, and maybe ... everything the Beach Boys and Brian have sung and played and done up to this moment." [27]

Artwork

Artist Frank Holmes, who designed the Smile cover artwork, created two illustrations that were inspired by the song's lyrics, "Diamond necklace play the pawn" and "Two-step to lamp's light". Along with several other drawings, they were planned to be included within a booklet packaged with the Smile LP. [28] In 2005, Holmes shared a background summary of his design choices:

"Diamond necklace play the pawn"

Smile artist Frank Holmes' "Diamond necklace played the pawn" illustration Surf's Up Smile Sessions Single - The Beach Boys.jpg
Smile artist Frank Holmes' "Diamond necklace played the pawn" illustration

The diamond necklace is an open box, like a jewellery case, with a diamond necklace in it. There's a little lettering there, "Tif", which is a reference to Tiffany's.

"Play the pawn" is a chess expression — it's what you do when you can't think of anything else to do, so you push the pawn — so there's chess pieces in there. The footsteps are just random things popped around there.

This one is a composite of several different ideas: it has the Smile Shoppe there, without the people, and then the lamp, and the wheat field in the background. Then there’s the rain cloud, and the sun and the ocean, the Tiffany box, and the lamp in the lower right corner. [29]

"Two-step to lamp's light"

This quote is like a double entendre, with a two-step being an infinity to step to the light. The two-step — the dance — and "two-step to lamp's light" is an idea of stepping to enlightenment, finding your way there.

"Surf's Up" was, like, the inside wave and the outside wave, so surf's up inside. I put it inside a dwelling, with the floor and the lamp — and the two-step part — in front.

Some of these ideas came from my childhood. At Catholic school, the art classes would always be centered around the holidays. At Thanksgiving, we'd always get to draw the turkey and the Indians and the pilgrims — the feathers — so a lot of those things come from my childhood, ways of relating to the Americana concept for manifest destiny and the West as a basis for the Smile album. [29]

Recording history

Smile sessions

Wilson held the first tracking session for "Surf's Up" at Western Studio 3, with usual engineer Chuck Britz, on November 4, 1966. It was logged with the subtitle "1st Movement". [30] Musicians present were upright bassist Jimmy Bond, drummer Frank Capp, guitarist Al Casey, pianist Al De Lory, bassist Carol Kaye, and percussionist Nick Pellico. [31] Wilson instructed Capp to play jewelry sounds from what was possibly a ring of car keys. [32] Between November 7 and 8, overdubs were recorded with Capp, Pellico, and a horn ensemble consisting of Arthur Brieglab, Roy Caton, David Duke, George Hyde, and Claude Sherry. [9] The November 7 session was dedicated to experimenting with horn effects, including an exercise in which Wilson instructed his musicians to laugh and have conversations through their instruments. The tape of this experiment was later given the label "George Fell into His French Horn". [31] Journalist Rob Chapman compared the piece to experiments heard on the 1965 album The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume One (1965). [12]

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Brian Wilson's solo piano run-through of "Surf's Up" (December 15, 1966)
Inside Pop host David Oppenheim introduced "Surf's Up" as "a new song, too complex to get all of [the] first time around". [33] This excerpt is from an unused take that was recorded for Inside Pop. It was later configured into the first released version of the song from 1971.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

There are at least two known "Surf's Up" recordings that have been presumed missing or lost: a vocal session at Columbia Studio from December 15, 1966, and two sessions at Western from January 23, 1967. [34] [35] According to Badman, the December 15 session included vocal and piano overdubs onto the first movement backing track, as well as further recording on the song "Wonderful". [36] Siegel later claimed that the session "went very badly". [37] That evening, Wilson had been filmed at Columbia Studio singing and performing "Surf's Up" on piano for use in David Oppenheim's CBS-commissioned documentary Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution . [9] According to Siegel,

I was there when he did "Surf's Up" for the CBS cameras. I was in the car with him — we smoked a joint before he went and did that; and afterwards, I said to him, "Why don't you just stop fucking around with this stuff, and just release that as a single now, like now! Don't wait for the album to do it." But he was afraid to do it. [38]

Wilson and Oppenheim were dissatisfied with what they had filmed, and decided to reshoot the sequence at Wilson's home two days later, on December 17. His performance that day, executed in one take with a candelabrum placed on his grand piano, was captured by three film cameras and deemed satisfactory for use in the documentary. [39] The lost sessions from January 1967 reportedly involved additional instrumental tracking, including a 16-piece string and horn section that was overdubbed onto a bounced tape of the backing track from December 15. [40]

A fully-developed recording of the song's second movement has never been found. In 2004, Darian Sahanaja said that a tape for the instrumental tracking of the section was rumored to exist somewhere, while Mark Linett stated, "If it does exist, we haven't found it." [14] Asked decades after the fact, Wilson responded that he did not think that he ever recorded it. [41] In 2011, Linett commented, "It’s interesting because there’s a session sheet indicating that the second half of 'Surf’s Up' – the backing track was recorded. But there's never been any taped evidence of it, and obviously there was no taped evidence when the Beach Boys went to finish it in the Seventies. And nobody, including Brian, can confirm that it ever happened. So it may have been a session that was mislabeled, or a session that got canceled." [42]

To add to the confusion, Domenic Priore's 2005 book Smile: The Story Of Brian Wilson’s Lost Masterpiece surprisingly says:

[43]

Inside Pop premiere and aftermath

Brian Wilson during his segment on the Inside Pop documentary. SurfsUpBrianWilson.jpg
Brian Wilson during his segment on the Inside Pop documentary.

Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution, hosted by composer Leonard Bernstein, premiered on the CBS network on April 25, 1967. [33] Brian's segment in the documentary featured him singing "Surf's Up" at his piano without any interview footage or references to Smile. [44] Oppenheim declared through voice-over that the song was "poetic, beautiful in its obscurity" and "one aspect of new things happening in pop music today. As such, it is a symbol of the change many of these young musicians see in our future." [32] He further described Wilson as "one of today's most important pop musicians." [33] According to Badman, Wilson's segment aroused "great expectations" for Smile, [33] while journalist Nick Kent wrote that Wilson was "freaked out" and "broke down" over the praise he was afforded in the documentary. [45]

After Smile was scrapped, Wilson neglected to include the song on the replacement album Smiley Smile (1967). He said that his decision to keep "Surf's Up" unreleased was one that "nearly broke up" the band. [46] [nb 1] In a review of Smiley Smile for Cheetah, a critic bemoaned the album's absence of "Surf's Up", writing that the song is "better than anything that is on the album and would have provided the same emotional catharsis as that 'A Day in the Life' provides for Sgt. Pepper ." [48]

During a 1970 interview, Wilson commented that the song was "too long to make it for me as a record, unless it were an album cut, which I guess it would have to be anyway. It's so far from a singles sound. It could never be a single." [49]

"Country Air" tape

"Surf's Up"
Surf's Up 1971.jpg
Single by the Beach Boys
from the album Surf's Up
B-side "Don't Go Near the Water"
ReleasedNovember 29, 1971 (1971-11-29)
RecordedNovember 4, 1966 – July 1971
Studio Western, Columbia, and Beach Boys Studio , Los Angeles
Genre
Length4:11
Label Brother, Reprise
Songwriter(s) Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks
Producer(s) The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys singles chronology
"Student Demonstration Time"
(1971)		"Surf's Up"
(1971)		"You Need a Mess of Help to Stand Alone"
(1972)
Licensed audio
"Surf's Up" on YouTube
External audio
Nuvola apps arts.svg "Surf's Up" (1967 version)

In late 1967, Wilson recorded several takes of another piano-vocal performance of "Surf's Up" at his home studio, presumably during sessions for the album Wild Honey . The forgotten demo was rediscovered several decades later when archivists searched through the contents at the end of the multi-track reel for the Wild Honey track "Country Air". Mark Linett stated: "No explanation for why he [Brian] did that and it was never taken any farther. Although I don’t think the intention was to take it any farther because it's just him singing live and playing piano." [42]

Surf's Up sessions

Early in 1971, the Beach Boys were recording their second album for Reprise Records, tentatively titled Landlocked . [50] Band manager Jack Rieley had asked Brian about including "Surf's Up" on the record, and in early June, Brian suddenly gave approval for Carl and Rieley to finish the song. [51] While on a drive to meet record company executive Mo Ostin, Brian said to Rieley: "Well, OK, if you're going to force me, I'll ... put 'Surf's Up' on the album." Rieley asked, "Are you really going to do it?" to which Brian repeated, "Well, if you're going to force me." [51] According to Rieley: "We got into Warner Brothers and, with no coaxing at all, Brian said to Mo, 'I'm going to put 'Surf's Up' on the next album.'" [51]

From mid-June to early July, Carl and Rieley retrieved the Smile multi-tracks from Capitol's vaults, primarily to locate the "Surf's Up" masters, and attempted to repair and splice the tapes. Brian joined them on at least two occasions. [52] Afterward, the band set to work on recording the song at their private studio, located within Brian's home. [53] Brian initially refused to participate in the recording of "Surf's Up" and insisted that Carl take the lead vocal. [54] The group attempted to rerecord the song from scratch. "But we scrapped it", Rieley later said, "because it didn't quite come up to the original." [55] [nb 2] An unsuccessful attempt was also made to mashup Brian's 1966 vocal to the instrumental track. According to Linett, a tape showcasing this effort still exists in the group's archives. [14] [42]

Carl Wilson (pictured 1971) sang the lead vocal that had been missing from the "1st Movement" backing track. Carl Wilson 1971.png
Carl Wilson (pictured 1971) sang the lead vocal that had been missing from the "1st Movement" backing track.

Carl ultimately overdubbed a lead vocal onto the song's first part, the original backing track dating from November 1966, as well as backing vocals. Two organ overdubs were also recorded. [53] The second movement was composed of the December 15, 1966 solo piano performance by Brian, [52] augmented with vocal and Moog synthesizer overdubs. [57] Carl reworked the refrain from another unreleased Smile song, "Child Is Father of the Man", into the coda of "Surf's Up". [53] Bruce Johnston recalled, "We ended up doing vocals to sort of emulate ourselves without Brian Wilson, which was kind of silly." [58] Al Jardine sang the lead vocal on this section. [41] Rieley said, "we all got involved in [the final tag]. ... I'm on it [and] a guy who worked for us part-time, Bill DeSimone, is on it. He just sings 'Hey, hey.' But it is integral to the tag on the record. That was a lot of fun ...". [54] Writing in a 1996 online Q&A, he wrote that Brian had "stated clearly that it was his intent all along for Child to be the tag for Surfs Up." [59]

To the surprise and glee of his associates, Brian emerged near the end of the sessions to aid Carl and engineer Stephen Desper in the completion of the coda. [60] As Desper recalled, "Brian didn't want to work on 'Surf's Up'. But after three days of coaxing, and of him walking in and out of the studio, he was finally convinced to do a part." [54] A final lyric was then devised, "A children's song / Have you listened as they play? / Their song is love / And the children know the way". [54] Desper credited Brian with the line, [60] while Rieley credited himself. [59] With the song completed, Landlocked was given the new title of Surf's Up. [54] The occasion marked the last time the group reworked material that was originally written for Smile. [61]

Release

On August 30, 1971, "Surf's Up" was released as the closing track on the LP of the same name. [54] A major part of the album's success came from the inclusion of the title track, [62] although most listeners at the time were unaware that the song derived from a lost Beach Boys album. [61] The band had also incorporated "Surf's Up" into their live set at the time. Circus reported that, at one concert, the group performed the song as a closer "after numerous requests" from the audience. [63] In another concert review from the NME , Tony Stewart reported that the band said "Surf's Up" was "a most apt title, implying they had deserted the surfing days". [64]

Reviewing the Surf's Up album for Melody Maker , Richard Williams wrote that the title track, "had it been released back at Pepper-time ... might have kept many people from straying into the pastures of indulgence and may have forced them to focus back on truer values. I've rarely heard a more perfect, more complete piece of music. From first to last it flows and evolves from the almost lush decadence of the first verses to the childlike wonders and open-hearted joy of the final chorale." [65] Don Heckman wrote in The New York Times that the song "bears easy comparison with the best of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper songs". [63]

Rolling Stone 's Arthur Schmidt judged the song to have lived up to its legend, although its placement on the record gave "something of the effect of Brian saying: 'Oh yeah, that’s our new album, but hey, you wanna hear something we had left over around here?'" [66] He added that while it "would have more than given a run to anything on Sergeant Pepper", the song was "dazzling" to a fault. [66] Geoffrey Cannon of The Guardian opined that Parks' lyrics were "pretentious", but compared the song favorably to "You Still Believe in Me" and "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times" from Pet Sounds : "Its subtle shifts of pace and timing, and delicate harmony singing, put it in the top flight of Beach Boys' numbers." [67]

"Surf's Up" was also issued as the album's third single in the U.S., in November, and failed to chart. [68] Record World rued that the song was "both enigma and musical masterpiece." [69] Cash Box likewise called the single a "masterpiece." [70]

Legacy

Other releases and performances

Parks joining Wilson onstage after a performance of Brian Wilson Presents Smile at the Royal Festival Hall, 2004. WilsonParksSmilePremiere.jpg
Parks joining Wilson onstage after a performance of Brian Wilson Presents Smile at the Royal Festival Hall, 2004.

In 1995, the Wondermints – a band that included Sahanaja as a member – performed a live cover of "Surf's Up" at the Morgan-Wixon Theater in Los Angeles with Wilson in the audience, who was then quoted saying "If I'd had these guys back in '66, I could've taken Smile on the road." [71] Wilson rerecorded the song as part of his 2004 album, Brian Wilson Presents Smile , with new string orchestrations arranged by himself, Parks, Sahanaja, and Paul Mertens. [14] For the 2011 compilation The Smile Sessions , Mark Linett created a new mix of the song that mashed up the 1966 backing track to the vocals from Brian's contemporaneous piano demo. [72]

In 2000, Radio City Music Hall held the All-Star Tribute to Brian Wilson, a concert that included a performance of "Surf's Up" by Jimmy Webb, David Crosby, and Vince Gill. [73] Gill had accepted the invitation to perform the song without having heard it before, expecting it to be in the style of the band's uptempo hits. He remembered his reaction to hearing the song for the first time:

I put it on and my eyes got really big. I said, "This is like a classical piece. This is deep. This is all the way over my head, I can't even touch the bottom here." [I told the organizer] "Dude, I don't know if I can cut this. It's got stupid range ... I walked off stage doing it that night ... and Brian was on the side of the stage, and I walked by him, and he shook my hand and goes, "That was really beautiful. We never did that song live because it was too hard." [laughs] I said, "Thanks a lot!" [74]

Love & Mercy , the 2014 biopic of Wilson's life, features a recreation of the Inside Pop performance with actor Paul Dano portraying Wilson. Dano told a Rolling Stone interviewer, "My second day of filming, I had to perform 'Surf’s Up' over and over. It remains one of the best days I’ve ever had a film set. ... but it's tough [to play]. I simplified a lot of the left hand work on the piano. Brian’s left-hand work is pretty complicated." [75]

Retrospective assessments

Writing in his book Inside the Music of Brian Wilson (2007), Philip Lambert named the song "the soul of Smile" and the "sum total of its creators' most profound artistic visions" with its "perfect marriage of an eloquent lyric with music of commensurate power and depth." [76] Musician Elvis Costello said that when he discovered a bootlegged tape of Wilson performing the song, "It was like hearing a tape of Mozart. It's just Brian and his piano and yet it's all there in that performance. The song already sounds complete." [12]

Record Collector 's Jamie Atkins said it was "so far ahead of the work of their contemporaries that it is not entirely surprising Wilson found himself recoiling from its sophistication and majesty; the songwriting equivalent of scaling Everest, only to find yourself thinking, 'Well, what now?'" [62] Critic Dave Marsh was less favorable towards the song. Writing in The Rolling Stone Record Guide (1983), he bemoaned the hype that continued to surround Wilson and the Smile project throughout the 1970s and opined that "Surf's Up" "was far less forceful and arguably less innovative than Wilson's surf-era hits." [77]

In a 1995 radio interview, Wilson referred to his singing on the recording as an "atrocious" performance. He said, "I'm embarrassed. Totally embarrassed. That was a piece of shit. Vocally it was a piece of shit. I was the wrong singer for it in the first place. ... And in the second place, I don't know why I would ever let a record go out like that." [68] A few years later, he added that his vocal "was a little bit limited. It's not my favorite vocal I ever did, but it did have heart." [78] In a 1975 interview, Mike Love voiced appreciation of the song's musical form and content, which he believed went beyond what was normally expected of commercial pop music. [79]

Accolades and polls

Personnel

Per Craig Slowinski, [83] Mark Dillon [84] and Keith Badman. [9]

Musicians on November 1966 instrumental track

Additional musicians on 1971 track

Notes

  1. ↑ Writing in a 1980 Sounds article, Sandy Robertson mentioned, "You've read all the stories about Dennis making Brian cry by screaming at him, demanding that he let the band release the song 'Surf's Up'." [47]
  2. ↑ In 2021, this discarded rerecording was released on the compilation Feel Flows . [56]

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References

  1. ↑ Gaines 1986, p. 242.
  2. ↑ Horton, Matthew (2015). "The Beach Boys - "Surf's Up". In Dimery, Robert (ed.). 1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die. New York: Universe. p. 288.
  3. ↑ Bush, John. "The Beach Boys - Surf's Up Album Reviews, Songs & More | AllMusic". allmusic. Retrieved 28 January 2023.
  4. ↑ Priore 2005, p. [ page needed ].
  5. 1 2 Carlin 2006, p. 97.
  6. ↑ Vosse, Michael (April 14, 1969). "Our Exagmination Round His Factification For Incamination of Work in Progress: Michael Vosse Talks About Smile". Fusion. Vol. 8.
  7. ↑ Lambert 2007, p. 280.
  8. 1 2 Priore 2005, p. 89.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Badman 2004, pp. 156–157.
  10. 1 2 3 Lambert 2007, p. 278.
  11. ↑ Lambert 2016, p. 83.
  12. 1 2 3 Chapman, Rob (February 2002). "The Legend of Smile". Mojo . Archived from the original on March 14, 2012.
  13. ↑ Lambert 2016, pp. 253–254.
  14. 1 2 3 4 Bell, Matt (October 2004). "The Resurrection of Brian Wilson's Smile". Sound on Sound. Retrieved July 9, 2020.
  15. ↑ Wilson & Greenman 2016, p. 210.
  16. ↑ Dillon 2012, p. 143.
  17. ↑ Carter 2021, p. 119.
  18. ↑ Zahl, David (November 16, 2011). "That Time The Beach Boys Made a Teenage Symphony to God". Mockingbird.
  19. ↑ Dillon 2012, p. 144.
  20. ↑ Siegel 1997, p. 62.
  21. ↑ Heylin 2007, p. 52.
  22. ↑ Nolan, Tom (October 28, 1971). "The Beach Boys: A California Saga". Rolling Stone.
  23. ↑ Carter 2016, p. 187.
  24. 1 2 Lambert 2016, p. 253.
  25. ↑ Lambert 2007, p. 277.
  26. ↑ Priore 2005, p. 90.
  27. ↑ Williams 2002, p. 103.
  28. ↑ Badman 2004, p. 173.
  29. 1 2 Priore 2005, p. 185.
  30. ↑ Badman 2004, p. 156.
  31. 1 2 Badman 2004, p. 157.
  32. 1 2 Dillon 2012, p. 145.
  33. 1 2 3 4 Badman 2004, p. 182.
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