Saturday June 4, 2022 “Surf’s Up” Beach Boys

Sure, you’re thinking, he must be dropping some LSD himself to even imagine including the Beach Boys in a week of psychedelic music.

In 1966 the Beach Boys were voted the most popular group in the world.  Balance that with the fact that the Beatles were at the height of their fame and had half a dozen big hits that year.  But you’re also likely thinking about the superficial songs about surf, cars and girls that the Beach Boys often sang about and dismissing some of their many amazing songs.

Also in 1966 Brian Wilson was working on the legendary album Smile, the album whose master tapes would be destroyed in a fire and would take more than twenty years to resurface in a version that may or may not be what the original might have sounded like.  Today’s song “Surf’s Up” with Lyrics by Van Dyke Parks came as a result of those Smile sessions.

Psychedelic music is of course a vague category that someone created for music at that moment but if there ever was a psychedelic songwriter it would have to be Brian Wilson who while he was creating Smile was taking LSD as a part of his daily regimen.  It would of course lead to some severe mental issues for Wilson which gratefully he emerged from.

“Surf’s Up” is a truly remarkable, underplayed song and if you chose to check the lyrics as the song is performed you will certainly understand that this is a song inspired by an alternate reality along with being a musical masterpiece.

Stay safe and well…and enjoy this nearly operatic live version of “Surfs Up” by Vince Gill, David Crosby and Jimmy Webb…feel free to skip the final segment with Dennis Hopper.

A diamond necklace played the pawn

Hand in hand some drummed along, oh

To a handsome man and baton

A blind class aristocracy

Back through the opera glass you see

The pit and the pendulum drawn

Columinated ruins domino

 Canvass the town and brush the backdrop

Are you sleeping?

 Hung velvet overtaken me

Dim chandelier awaken me

To a song dissolved in the dawn

The music hall a costly bow

The music all is lost for now

To a muted trumpeter swan

Columinated ruins domino

 Canvass the town and brush the backdrop

Are you sleeping, Brother John?

 Dove nested towers the hour was

Strike the street quicksilver moon

Carriage across the fog

Two-Step to lamp lights cellar tune

The laughs come hard in Auld Lang Syne

 The glass was raised, the fired rose

The fullness of the wine, the dim last toasting

While at port adieu or die

 A choke of grief heart hardened I

Beyond belief a broken man too tough to cry

 Surf's up

Aboard a tidal wave

Come about hard and join

The young and often spring you gave

I heard the word

Wonderful thing

A children's song

 Child, child, child, child, child

A child is the father of the man

Child, child, child, child, child

A child is the father of the man

A children's song

Have you listened as they played

Their song is love

And the children know the way

That's why the child is the father to the man

Child, child, child, child, child

Child, child, child, child, child

Na na na na na na na na

Child, child, child, child, child

That's why the child is the father to the man

Child, child, child, child, child