On October 10th, 1966, The Beach Boys released what is arguably the greatest and most groundbreaking single of the rock era with the Mike Love / Brian Wilson collaboration, “Good Vibrations.” Tracking for the tune, which was The Beach Boys’ final single of the 1960’s to bear the “Produced by Brian Wilson” credit, originally began during the group’s 1966 Pet Sounds sessions, with music by Brian and preliminary lyrics by his then-collaborator, Tony Asher. Ultimately, Wilson continued to tinker with the song’s melody and production, but all without a permanent set of lyrics.
For Brian Wilson, “Good Vibrations” symbolized a creative jolt that had him discarding all his pre-set production rules and searching for a new horizon: “I was an energetic 23-year-old when I cut ‘Good Vibrations,’ There was a lot of, ‘Oh, you can’t do this, it’s too modern’ or ‘That’s going to be too long a record.’ I said, ‘No, it’s not going to be too long; it’s going to be just right.’ It was recorded in four studios: Western Recorders, Sunset Sound, Gold Star, and RCA Victor. We wanted to try different-sounding studios to see what would work. I wrote out each musician’s part on music paper then they all played it together. I found I could work out each part without it being too difficult. It did get tedious, though. The musicians understood it all straight away. (Drummer) Hal Blaine was always right on my wavelength.”
Beach Boys co-founder Al Jardine still thinks of “Good Vibrations” as being an extension of Pet Sounds: “At the time, we had all assumed that ‘Good Vibrations’ was going to be on Pet Sounds, but Brian decided to hold it back. It was a judgement call on his part.”
Dennis Wilson was one of his older brother’s biggest supporters in taking whatever steps he needed to advance his creative vision: “People say ‘Good Vibrations’ took a lot longer than it really did. Actually, it took about four months, but we didn’t record every day. The sound was tracked in different sections and we wrote it as we were recording it. As we finished one part, we were inspired to do another. It just kept building and building.”
“Brian played me this strange sounding music over the telephone, the theremin.” — Carl Wilson
Back in 1981, Carl Wilson looked back on discovering what Brian had been up to in the studio while the band was on tour, recalling to Player: “The first time I ever heard ‘Good Vibrations’ was on the telephone; we were in North Dakota, we had just finished a show… I came back and the phone rang almost, like, immediately when I went in the room. And Brian played me this strange sounding music over the telephone, the theremin… It was a much rougher record when it started off, it was much more rambunctious. And it got refined as the time went on.”
Al Jardine vividly remembered the “Good Vibrations” sessions being highly charged and ultimately exhausting: “The technology and the recording machines would even change while we were going through these processes. From four-track to eight-track, to 16-track. And so, we had more availability of overdubbing. So, we’d work long hours, double tracking, triple tracking.”
Mike Love, the band’s frontman, asked to take a crack at the lyrics, which was one of his main duties prior to Pet Sounds: “It was panic, because I was on my way to the recording session and I hadn’t finished the lyrics. I’d written the chorus, but not the verse. 1966 was the beginnings of the psychedelic sounds and groups. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and The Doors, all that was going on at the time, which had an influence. The music of ‘Good Vibrations’ was so unique and so psychedelic in itself; it was such a departure from what we had done before — songs like ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.,’ ‘California Girls,’ ‘I Get Around,’ and ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ — all of which I had a hand in writing. I wanted to do something that captured this feeling of the track and the times but also could relate to people.”
“Brian is bliss for the ear.” — Jon Stebbins
Noted Beach Boys author and historian Jon Stebbins felt that mixing Wilson’s daring record production with cousin Mike Love’s ability to craft hook-based and romantic lyrics created a simply unbeatable musical combination: “Brian was kind of esoteric, and the stuff that Brian created that your ear enjoys — like, Brian is bliss for the ear. The things that he created are the things that give your ears orgasms, y’know? They’re so wonderful to hear over and over again and you get addicted to them and you wanna hear them again and again. That’s Brian. But the things that make it interesting the first time you hear them directly are some of the things that Mike added in there — and also things that made them so catchy.”
Staying true to the musicality of the track while keeping the lyrics relatable to the fanbase was Mike Love’s ultimate goal: “It was basically a flowery poem: ‘I love the colorful clothes she wears and the way the sunlight plays upon her hair.’ It was kind of a flower-power poem to suit the times and complement the really amazingly unique track that Brian came up with. What I always sought to do when writing a song was try to find something positive to communicate, because I felt that people’s lives were challenging enough.”
“Good Vibrations” marked Brian Wilson’s first attempt at a “modular” recording approach, which pieced together multiple different sections to form a constantly changing musical landscape. The song was unrivaled in its choice of lead instruments, which included flutes, cellos, and a version of a theremin, called a tannerin, which provided the song’s eerie “woo woo” sound. Wilson ultimately used over 90 hours of tape and dozens of session musicians at several different Los Angeles recording studios. The song cost between $75,000 and $100,000 to record — an astonishing amount for 1966.
Carl Wilson knew that not tracking the song in a traditional and linear fashion was a pioneering way to go about record making: “It was pretty daring back then to record a section and see if it would fit in later. ‘Good Vibrations’ has a lot of texture on it because we did so many overdubs. We’d double or triple or quadruple the exact same part, so it would sound like 20 voices.”
“I am one of the luckiest guys in the music world to have my voice on this great pocket symphony recording.” — Bruce Johnston
Although only recording and touring with The Beach Boys for just over a year, Bruce Johnston was acutely aware that he was smack dab in the middle of the most progressive pop music being recorded in America: “All I had to do was show up at Columbia Records Studio A for two exciting evenings of singing. Brian had months of recording track sections in different Hollywood recording studios until the time was ‘right’ to sing on these tracks. ‘Good Vibrations’ is beyond a milestone musically. I am one of the luckiest guys in the music world to have my voice on this great pocket symphony recording.”
Brian Wilson admitted that it was a moment that never turned up on the record that came to define the great spirit amongst the band during the song’s vocal sessions: “Every time I have to sing ‘Good Vibrations’ it takes me back to the time when Al Jardine had to stand up on a big box because he was too short for the microphone. And he had to stand up on a box, so he could sing with us on microphone. And we did ‘Good Vibrations’ that way and he fell off the box (laughs) — right in the middle of a take!!!”
“Good Vibrations” was such an immediate hit that it reportedly sold 230,000 copies in the first four days of its release. Although it only topped the chart for one week, “Good Vibrations” went on to become The Beach Boys’ first million-selling single.
For Mike Love, teaming back up with Brian was a welcome reunion following Pet Sounds, which found him sidelined as Tony Asher filled the album’s lyricist role: “After Pet Sounds, the track re-established my songwriting partnership with Brian and served as another example of our unique collaboration — the tour-de-force studio work, the lyrical messaging. It was a triumph of both art and commerce. More than anything, ‘Good Vibrations’ indicated that we could evolve with the times. The Beach Boys were never just a ‘surf band,’ as the stereotype would have it. By 1966, we had recorded all kinds of music, but what had been successful in the past wouldn’t necessarily succeed in the future. The question was, could we develop a new sound that retained the idealistic ethos of our early music while staying in sync with an era of tumult and protest — music that was avant garde and edgy with a spiritual sheen? ‘Good Vibrations’ said we could.”
Carl Wilson took the lead vocal, with Mike Love supplying the song’s chorus. Brian Wilson revealed that it was none other than his brother Dennis Wilson who contributed the church-like organ during the slower portion of the song: “He was sitting at the organ, and I said, ‘I wanna play the organ,’ and he says, ‘Well, let me play.’ So I said, ‘Alright,’ and I taught him his part.”
“I can remember doing 25 to 30 vocal overdubs of the same part.” — Mike Love
Putting in the hard work during the band’s grueling vocal sessions was what separated The Beach Boys from the pack, with Mike Love remembering, “‘Good Vibrations’ required 22 sessions. I doubt Brian had any idea about the cost, nor did he care, but at the time it was certainly one of the most expensive singles ever produced. Brian recorded at least a dozen versions until settling on one. We did one passage of ‘Good Vibrations’ over and over, not only to get the notes right, but because we wanted to hear the timbre and quality of each note and how the four parts would resonate together. It was so exhausting! I can remember doing 25 to 30 vocal overdubs of the same part — and when I say ‘part’ I mean the same section of the record — maybe no more than five seconds long.”
On the morning of August 13th, 1966 — the day after The Beatles kicked off their final North American tour at Chicago’s International Amphitheatre — and John Lennon apologized to the world’s press for his “The Beatles are bigger than Jesus” remark — The Beach Boys’ Mike Love and Bruce Johnston came calling. Johnston recalled the historic scene at Chicago’s Astor Towers Hotel: “Mike and I met with The Beatles for breakfast one morning in their suite in Chicago. They had a piano, and they said, ‘Hey, what are you guys doing?’ So, it was like, summer ’66. Mike told them about ‘Good Vibrations.’ Brian taught me the chords for the chorus. We said, ‘Well, we’ll show you the chorus.’ Mike couldn’t stop me. I started playing it. We started singing it, and they freaked out. They loved it. So that’s post-being influenced by Pet Sounds.”
Brian Wilson knew that he had hit an artistic peak with the band’s final single of 1966: “Everybody that heard it said, ‘That’s a Number One record.’ They were so flipped and excited and they guaranteed that it would be a Number One record, and it was.”
“Good Vibrations” went on to top the chart for one week exactly two months later from December 10th to 16th, 1966.
It is considered the musical “missing link” between The Beach Boys’ 1966 Pet Sounds album and their then-unreleased follow-up, SMiLE. Brian Wilson never intended for “Good Vibrations” to be included in the original track listing for SMiLE but succumbed to record company pressure in 1967 to add the track on the album. After SMiLE was abandoned, it was included on the 1967 album released in its place, Smiley Smile.
“It’s idiotic to get hung up on not being able to reproduce the sound. We know we can’t.” — Carl Wilson
Over the years, “Good Vibrations” has mainly been performed as one of the group’s many show-stopping encores. In the early-’70s however, the group sometimes took fans by surprise by opening their sets with the instant classic. Carl Wilson understood that the group’s harmonies would need to carry complexity of the song’s arrangement in concert: “It’s idiotic to get hung up on not being able to reproduce the sound. We know we can’t and I think it’s wrong for people to expect us to. But our voices get plenty of exercise on stage and we rest them at other times, so it works out alright.”
When looking back on the group’s golden era, Mike Love believes “Good Vibrations” is the shining example of the stars perfectly aligning in terms of creativity and commerce: “Well, I think ‘Good Vibrations’ was probably the height of our creativity in the ’60s. It was not only successful — really successful — but it was very unique. It was probably the least derivative of our hit singles. Meaning everything is based on something that came before — that’s what I mean by derivative. But with ‘Good Vibrations,’ it was so darn different, so unique sounding. And yet it was successful as well. And I admit to liking things that are both successful and creative (laughs).”
On October 21st, 1966, The Beach Boys live-premiered “Good Vibrations” during their concert at Lansing, Michigan’s Jenison Field House at Michigan State University. Brian Wilson was on hand for the band’s next two shows at Ann Arbor’s Hill Auditorium at the University of Michigan to supervise the recording of a possible live album — the tapes of which were eventually released in 2016 as Graduation Day 1966.
“Good Vibrations” continues to either top or place highly in various rock n’ roll “Best Of” lists, most notably in 1997 when it topped Britain’s Mojo magazine’s list of Top 100 Records of All Time — beating out The Beatles’ 1967 double A-sided single “Penny Lane”/“Strawberry Fields Forever.”
Mike Love still takes tremendous pride in writing the words to Brian Wilson’s music for The Beach Boys’ epic 1966 chart-topper: “It was a pleasure to work with my cousin Brian on co-creating that song. And, I think, may years ago, Rolling Stone had some poll and they regarded ‘Good Vibrations’ as the ‘Single of the Century,’ or something like that.”
“It was a real production. The biggest production of our lives.” — Brian Wilson
In career filled with astounding accomplishments, both creatively and commercially, for Brian Wilson, “Good Vibrations” was the top of the mountain: “Within the three minutes and thirty-five seconds of the song there were a lot of riff changes. It had a lot of movements, building harmonies, echo chambers, the theremin. It was a real production. The biggest production of our lives. We did the final cut of ‘Good Vibrations’ at Columbia. I could just feel it when I dubbed it down and made the final mix down to the mono. It was everything.”