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When I Grow Up (To Be A Man): The BEACH BOYS in 1964.

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Feature Image: The Beach Boys in 1964; clockwise from left: Al Jardine, Mike Love, Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson. Trade ad for The Beach Boys’s single “California Girls”/”Let Him Run Wild.” Public Domain. Permission details The ad appeared in the 11 September 1965 issue of Billboard and can be dated from that publication; it is pre-1978. There are no copyright markings as can be seen at the full view link. The ad is not covered by any copyrights for Billboard. US Copyright Office page 3-magazines are collective works (PDF) “A notice for the collective work will not serve as the notice for advertisements inserted on behalf of persons other than the copyright owner of the collective work. These advertisements should each bear a separate notice in the name of the copyright owner of the advertisement.”

The Beach Boys in Europe in late 1964. The Beach Boys appearing in a Billboard magazine in 1964. Public Domain.

By John P. Walsh

On November 2, 1964 the Beach Boys invaded London, England for a television appearance and concert.

At the press conference 22-year-old Brian Wilson who in this period co-wrote, with 23-year-old Mike Love, “When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)” said he wanted to see the band someday record in England. Eventually in 1972 they did record in Holland. See – https://johnpwalshblog.com/2022/08/24/seafaring-treasure-in-classic-rock-the-backstories-of-blues-images-no-4-hit-ride-captain-ride-1970-and-the-beach-boys-twice-charting-sail-on-sailor-1973-1975/

Mike Love and Brian Wilson wrote “When I Grow Up (To be a Man)” as well as most of “The Beach Boys Today!” released in March 1965 on which it appeared. Trade ad for The Beach Boys’s single “California Girls”/”Let Him Run Wild.” Public Domain. Permission details The ad appeared in the 11 September 1965 issue of Billboard and can be dated from that publication; it is pre-1978. There are no copyright markings as can be seen at the full view link. The ad is not covered by any copyrights for Billboard. US Copyright Office page 3-magazines are collective works (PDF) “A notice for the collective work will not serve as the notice for advertisements inserted on behalf of persons other than the copyright owner of the collective work. These advertisements should each bear a separate notice in the name of the copyright owner of the advertisement.”

With the press media in England Wilson admitted the Beach Boys had written and performed music on surfer subjects as well as cars but displayed anger as he denied that they had anything to do per se with “surfer music” and certainly not in originating or perpetrating it. Besides, Wilson offered that that phase was pretty much over. Their music was just their sound that people liked to listen to. In London and elsewhere he said that the Beach Boys had found new subjects particularly on social themes surrounding what it meant to be a young person in the mid1960’s.

New gas station, Fort Worth, Texas 1964. “New gas station, Fort Worth, Texas 1964” by | El Caganer – Over 8.5 Million views! is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Recorded and released as a single in August 1964, “When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)” was another song by Brian Wilson and Mike Love. Mike Love thought it may have had to do with Brian Wilson’s father’s concern for his sons’ masculinity in the glitzy music business (see Love, p. 92) as much as his criticism of Brian’s impending marriage in December 1964 to 16-year-old Marilyn Rovell, a member of the Honeys. Brian had asked for her hand in an expensive telephone call from Australia when the Beach Boys were on tour there and in New Zealand in January 1964 and more than once until the nuptials. Back in California, Wilson produced his song, “He’s a Doll,” for the Honeys who recorded it on February 17, 1964 and released it two months later, on April 13, 1964.

The Honeys (originally the Rovell Sisters) were an American girl group formed in Los Angeles. After 1962, the Rovell Sisters were rechristened “the Honeys” by Brian Wilson who served as its record producer and songwriter. He married Marilyn Rovell of the Honeys in December 1964. From left: Marilyn Rovell, Diane Rovell, and Ginger Blake.

The Beach Boys’ first no. 1 single was one that was released in May 1964. They had been making music since 1962 and the last twelve months, since May 1963, had been busy and productive. Since spring of 1963 they had 3 top-5 hits (and two more top-10 hits). “Surfin’ U.S.A.” peaked at no. 3 in May 1963 and became Billboard’s no.1 song for the year. “Little Saint Nick” released in December 1963 peaked at no. 3 on the Billboard Christmas Singles chart. By the time “Fun, Fun, Fun” peaked at no. 5 in March 1964, everything had changed in rock ‘n roll music in America, and particularly for the Beach Boys. The change was marked by the appearance of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964. Literally half the country – 74 million people – tuned in and the impact was immediate. When the Beach Boys heard the hordes of screaming fans for the Fab Four, Brian Wilson thought for a moment about quitting, disappointed that so much of what the California band had been working on and striving for had suddenly been eclipsed – and by Brits no less. Brian Wilson set to work to complete more original material and was more open to experimenting with arrangements and instrumentation to achieve a new sound. Though the Beach Boys were replaced in the top spot on Billboard’s year-end singles in 1964 by the Beatles (“I Want To Hold Your Hand”) and the Beatles locked up the second spot as well (“She Loves You”), “I Get Around,” was in the top 5 that year.

The Brian Wilson-Mike Love song was released as a single on May 11, 1964, with “Don’t Worry Baby” on the B-side. “I Get Around” was on the Billboard Hot 100 by mid-June and the no. 1 song for the first two weeks of July 1964. As Mike Love saw it in his Good Vibrations: My Life as Beach Boy, “As exciting as it is to see a record climb the charts, it inevitably falls, sometimes quickly. “I Get Around” remained No.1  for two weeks. So it was all about the next new song, recording it, getting it on the radio, getting it charted, keeping the ball rolling.” (Love, p. 97)

On July 13, 1964, the Beach Boy’s sixth album All Summer Long was released on Capitol records with “I Get Around” its first track. Considered the band’s first artistically unified collection of songs, All Summer Long reached the Billboard 200 two weeks later and rose rapidly to peak at no.4 on August 22, 1964. According to Mike Love, the lyrics developed out of their experiences describing the band’s restlessness with “instant fame, some fortune” and looking to find new spaces and places “where the kids are hip.” By the second and final verses the narrator has moved from monotonous boredom in search of something more to boasting that he has the fastest car and great success with the women. In those first few months of 1964  the Beach Boys  had moved from wunderkind band to a personal and musical maturity. On “I Get Around” Dennis Wilson biographer Jon Stebbins wrote that it “is clearly ahead of its time, and it signals the speed at which Brian had developed. With its edgy guitar/sax bursts doubled with trebly reverbed Fender flicks, electric-organ fills, and an arrangement that stops, goes, accelerates, and then stops and goes a few more times, the song is nearly otherworldly in its inventiveness. Each band member’s voice is showcased, and this helps to make this single as good as any pop record ever made.” In February 1965, All Summer Long was certified gold by the RIAA. So that by the time of the Beach Boys’ American invasion of Britain in November 1964 they continued their counter to the British invasion of the Beatles in February 1964.

“Carl’s Big Chance,” the final surfer instrumental on a Beach Boys studio album, was recorded to showcase Carl Wilson’s guitar playing.
Also inspired by the Beatles’ success doing the same thing, the Beach Boys recorded “In My Room” in German so to promote their fan base there. In February 1964, the Beach Boys were in Europe doing TV and in-person appearances when the Beatles debuted on The Ed Sullivan Show in New York City.

Though released after the onset of Beatlemania in March 1964, the material for the Beach Boys’ album, Shut Down Volume Two, was conceived, written, and produced in late 1963 and early 1964. The Beatles’ impetus on the Beach Boys to more subtly integrate older musical sources to something new and original would still be several weeks and months in the offing. The lead track, Fun, Fun, Fun was recorded in the first week of January 1964 and released as a single on February 3, 1964, less than a week before the Beatles’ first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. That appearance (and the Rolling Stones’ stateside arrival in June 1964) is considered the beginning of rock music’s British Invasion and a milestone in American pop culture. Meanwhile, the lovely melancholic The Warmth of the Sun on side one of Shut Down Volume Two was written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love on the night of the Kennedy assassination in November 1963. Considered one of the finer early Beach Boys tunes, the Wilson-Love song collaboration would be kicked up more than a notch in 1964. Seemingly overnight, in front of the whole world, in that musical moment of February-March 1964, the Beatles marked the beginning of the 1960’s as we know it, and the Beach Boys, freely admitting to the passing of their car and surfer craze and, with The Warmth of the Sun, if written for JFK, Camelot, marked the era’s ending. Both were appropriate junctures for young developing bands: the Beatles, in 1964, out front of the Beach Boys to start. Although The Warmth of the Sun was on the best-selling Shut Down Vol. II (no. 13 on the Billboard 200), it didn’t get too much air play until it was placed on the B-side of the single Dance, Dance, Dance at the end of the year. This followed the release of the Beach Boys’ All Summer Long (I Get Around; Wendy) in July 1964 and anticipated The Beach Boys Today! (When I Grow Up (To Be a Man); Help Me, Rhonda) in March 1965. Both studio LPs – the Beach Boys’ sixth and eighth – grabbed back some of the rock pop critical and popular initiative they had prior to the Beatles. As the mid1960s were now in full swing, it also started the informal competition between two 20-something composers – namely, Southern Californian Brian Wilson and Liverpudlian Paul McCartney.

The Warmth of The Sun was written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love on the night of the JFK assassination. Released in February 1964 one week before the appearance of the Beatles for the first time on The Ed Sullivan Show that began the British invasion in pop music, the Beach Boys’ song marked the close of an era just as another opened.
A penultimate filler track, “Our Favorite Recording Sessions,” on All Summer Long showed the Beach Boys, like the Beatles, as just silly likeable band-mates. The Beach Boys were the first American band to do this type of humanizing perspective in their work.
Broadcast on April 18, 1964, the Beach Boys appeared on American Bandstand. They lip-synched “Don’t Worry Baby” and host Dick Clark interviewed  them. The rest of the show was dedicated to the music of the Beatles. In 1964 the Beach Boys decided it was time to move past popular surfer and car songs.
Following the release of Shut Down Volume Two, the Beach Boys appeared on the Steve Allen Show. Allen in his introduction said, “I’m sure you’re familiar with them they’ve had so many big hit records this last year. Let’s welcome the Beach Boys with Fun, Fun, Fun.”

Wilson’s “When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)” is one of the first rock songs to present a teenager thinking in the first person about serious matters on his future adulthood. It is one of the first top-40 songs (no.1 in Canada and no. 9 in the U.S.) to use the idiomatic term “turn on” (as in “Will I dig the same things that turned me on as a kid?”). It is also an intelligent question, in Mike Love’s part, of what sort of woman he will pursue in the near future as a man.

In Brian Wilson’s part, the composition’s 14-year-old narrator asks another pertinent question in the song: “Will I love my wife for the rest of my life?” As Wilson was soon getting married in real life, there is an invested urgency and emotional depth in the teenager’s question. At the same time, it is a careful, perhaps even emotionally prescient question as it does not query their marital status (Wilson and Marilyn Rovell were divorced in 1979). The lyrics are creatively astute in that “When I Grow Up” conveys these late adolescence complexities in an uplifting tone of apparent innocence, sincere interest, and hopeful enthusiasm by its serious teenage narrator.

The manager of the Beach Boys was the Wilson brothers’ father, Murry. Murry Wilson mused out loud whether his eldest son, Brian Wilson, at 22 years old, was possibly immature in his choices. Yet Brian, despite his mental breakdowns, was taking charge in his personal and professional life.

The Beach Boys Today! was recorded mostly in 1964 and released in March 1965. It peaked at no. 4 on the Billboard 200 and was certified Gold. “beach boys- today!” by cdrummbks is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Before the March 1965 album, The Beach Boys Today!, was completed and whose recording began in August 1964 with “When I Grow Up (To Be A Man),” Murry was fired by Brian and didn’t return. Despite Murry’s expressed doubts and his eldest son’s impending marriage, Brian Wilson’s music was growing and developing by leaps and bounds. Surrounded by the smell of cannabis that Brian started smoking regularly, new musical insight is heard in When I Grow Up (To Be A Man). It is one of the first Beach Boys’ songs featuring those oddly changing, yet harmonious chords that do not stay in one key for more than a few measures. That musical structure characterized many of Brian Wilson’s finest compositions going forward. The young producer also again deployed a harpsichord – it can be heard in I Get Around – which was a creative use of a 16th century Baroque instrument which was unusual for a mid-1960’s pop rock song. The Beach Boys’ example, however, led to its use and that of other classical music instruments much more by rock bands afterwards. The track also features, as Jon Stebbins maintains, “one of Dennis’s best studio drum performances” (see – The Beach Boys FAQS, 2011, p. 53).

The Beach Boys Today! started recording in August 1964 and was completed in January 1965. It was recorded at three different studios in Hollywood (United Western Recorders, Gold Star Studios, and RCA Studios) using over 30 session musicians and was released on March 8, 1965. In those months Brian also suffered breakdowns that he later explained as owing to circumstances. “I used to be Mr. Everything, “he said, “I was run down mentally and emotionally because I was running around, jumping on jets from one city to another on one-night stands, also producing, writing, arranging, singing, planning, teaching – to the point where I had no peace of mind and no chance to actually sit down and think or even rest” (quoted in Badman, p. 74). Love saw it differently attributing some of it to the impending psychedelic drug culture that characterized the mid to late 1960s and Brian’s novel, if limited, involvement (see Love, p. 185). A dismissed Murry stayed in Hawthorne, California at home (3701 W. 119th Street; torn down in the mid1980s) where youngest brother, Carl Wilson, was still living and where he listened many times to Introducing… The Beatles and Meet the Beatles! in his room.

In April 1964 and May 1964 members of the Beach Boys appeared personally in two films and Brian Wilson’s songs were used in other films. In April 1964 Brian Wilson spent two days on the set of “Girls on the Beach,” a 1965 release, singing his song “Lonely Sea” to a group of teenagers from the Surfin’ USA album. The movie, about a sorority house trying to book the Beatles for a benefit concert, have to settle for the Beach Boys instead. Everything changed away from these corny stilted low budget beach and surfer flicks when, in August 1964, A Hard Day’s Night was released. The Beatles got to play themselves in a witty script that featured their songs and natural appeal. It was as far as could be from California surfer girls and boys whose music the Beach Boys showcased.
In May 1964 the Beach Boys were still just starting out when they played back up to Annette Funicello (1942-2013) during the opening credits of the Disney comedy film, Monkey’s Uncle, released in summer 1965. They are lip-synching a Sherman brothers’ song. Former Mouseketeer Funicello was making her last movie for Disney and had high praise for the Beach Boys. “As silly as the [opening credits] song is in places,” she remarked, “it really does rock and with the Beach Boys’ amazing four-part harmonies, I could sing it without echo.” (see – Funicello, Annette; Bashe, Patricia Romanowski (1994). A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes: My Story. Hyperion. p. 134). She continued: “They were wonderful guys and I feel fortunate that I was kind of in on the ground floor. We even worked together performing at Disneyland. Little did any of us know how successful they would become.” (see-  Santoli, Lorraine (Spring 1993). “Annette – As Ears Go By”. Disney News Magazine. p. 18.)

In June 1964 they recorded The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album (released in November 1964) and since July had been in Hawaii and Arizona to begin their 33-day, 42-concert Surfin’ Safari tour. After Murry was fired the Beach Boys became more involved in their concert date strategy, such as playing nearby secondary and tertiary cities as well as playing in big ones (see Love, p. 98). In early August 1964, “When I Grow Up (To Be A Man)” was the first song recorded for The Beach Boys Today! and released as a single on August 24, 1964. It is a philosophical song whose music is an artistic progression for Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys with its rich and profound instrumental arrangement and 4-part vocal harmonies that are fluid and ethereal (See – https://www.songfacts.com/lyrics/the-beach-boys/the-warmth-of-the-sun – retrieved April 16, 2024). Wilson’s use of the harpsichord in the song could stem from “easy listening” sources such as Henry Mancini’s Playboy’s Theme  (1960) from the late-night TV show or other of his film scores. Rock critic Richard Meltzer later observed that it was When I Grow Up (To be a Man) that marked the moment when the Beach Boys “abruptly ceased to be boys” (quoted in O’Regan, Jody (2014). When I Grow Up: The Development of the Beach Boys’ Sound (1962-1966) (PDF) (Thesis). Queensland Conservatorium, p. 253). In his 2016 memoir, Love wrote that the song was “probably influenced” by Murry Wilson who constantly challenged Brian’s manhood.

LYRICS
When I grow up to be a man
Will I dig the same things that turn me on as a kid?
Will I look back and say that I wish I hadn’t done what I did?
Will I joke around and still dig those sounds
When I grow up to be a man?
Will I look for the same things in a woman that I dig in a girl?
(Fourteen fifteen)
Will I settle down fast or will I first wanna travel the world?
(Sixteen seventeen)
Now I’m young and free, but how will it be
When I grow up to be a man?
Ooh ooh ooh
Ooh ooh ooh
Will my kids be proud or think their old man is really a square?
(Eighteen nineteen)
When they’re out having fun yeah, will I still wanna have my share?
(Twenty twenty-one)
Will I love my wife for the rest of my life, rest of my life
When I grow up to be a man?
What will I be when I grow up to be a man?
(Twenty-two twenty-three)
Won’t last forever
(Twenty-four twenty-five)
It’s kind of sad
(Twenty-six twenty-seven)
Won’t last forever
(Twenty-eight twenty-nine)
It’s kind of sad
(Thirty thirty-one)
Won’t last forever
(Thirty-two)
In September 1964 the Beach Boys picked up the Surfin Safari tour that they broke off in August 1964 to return to the studio to record and release When I Grow Up (To Be a Man). After touring up and down the East Coast from Florida to New York, they made an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on September 27, 1964. In front of screaming fans they performed “I Get Around,” their no.1 hit that year and what would become a top-5 Billboard song of the year.
Released October 19, 1964, the live album Beach Boys Concert was the first Beach Boys album to be no. 1 on the Billboard 200. The only other album to achieve the top spot is Endless Summer in 1974. Recorded in Sacramento, California, Beach Boys Concert was the first live album to top the pop music record charts (see – Moskowitz, David V., ed. (2015). The 100 Greatest Bands of All Time: A Guide to the Legends Who Rocked the World, p.42). It was on the charts for nearly a year and in the no. 1 spot for 4 consecutive weeks. Because Brian Wilson was not going to perform live with the group in the future, it is a relatively rare recording of the original line-up.
Also in October of 1964, the Beach Boys, crowd pleasers mostly wherever they went, played four songs at the T.A.M. I. (Teenage Music International Show) in Santa Monica, California. Others in that show included Chuck Berry, James Brown, the Supremes, Smokey Robinson and the Rolling Stones. According to Mike Love’s “Good Vibrations,” he met and made friends with Marvin Gaye at that show. The Rolling Stones played right before the Beach Boys who played Surfin’ USA, I Get Around, Surfer Girl, Dance, Dance, Dance.

When the Beach Boys landed in London in early November 1964 there was an electricity in the air surrounding them. Since February they had a top-5 hit (Fun, Fun, Fun), no. 1 song (“I Get Around”), a no.1 album (Beach Boys Concert), TV and movie appearances, live concert tours and so on. They had two follow-up  top-10 singles – When I Grow Up (To Be Man) and Dance, Dance, Dance. The band’s leader, Brian Wilson, was getting married in December. There was a competition between the Beach Boys and the Beatles who, so far, dominated the field, despite the Beach Boys’ tremendous accomplishment. Their arrival into Britain was greeted with screaming fans and lots of media attention. As Mike Love put it, “Five singles and four albums – by any measure, an extraordinary year. It did nothing to slow down the Beatles, who had nine Top 10 singles and six albums that charted either 1 or 2, but both commercially and artistically, we were doing our best to hold our own.” (Love, p. 97)

In November 1964, after eight days in England doing TV and radio promotions and taping performances, the band flew to France, Italy, Germany, Denmark and Sweden to make more live appearances. It was their first time in Paris and the Beach Boys acted like typical camera-toting young American tourists in Montmartre. At their concert at Olympia Hall in Paris they were greeted by fans shrieking in French. Mike Love stated in his Good Vibrations that when he wrote “California Girls” in 1965 the lyrics were inspired by the band’s experiences seeing all the beautiful women during their late 1964 European tour – and thinking of home.  

They flew back home and did more concerts until, on December 7, 1964, Brian Wilson and Marilyn Rovell married. As Mike Love observed, it was Brian Wilson who was under the most “pressure” of “trying to keep pace with the Beatles, trying to satisfy the [record] label, trying to become a global band.” (Love, p. 104). On December 23, 1964, Brian Wilson was on an airplane from L.A. to Houston, Texas, to start a 25-date concert tour when he announced he had had enough of the hectic lifestyle of a pop rocker. Getting back to L.A., he returned to the vacant family homestead in Hawthorne and had a long talk with his mother who, Brian said, “sort of straightened me out” (quoted in The Beach Boys’ America’s Band, Johnny Morgan, p.81). Despite Brian’s marriage and breakdown, the Beach Boys road show carried on. Glen Campbell filled in for Brian to finish out the concert dates in Texas that ended the year 1964 for the Beach Boys. It was to be a busy January 1965.

SOURCES:

The Beach Boys: America’s Band, Johnny Morgan, Union Square & Co.; Illustrated edition, 2015, pp. 63-81.

The Beach Boys: The Definitive Diary of America’s Greatest Band on Stage and in the Studio, Keith Badman, Backbeat Books; First Edition, 2004.  

Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy, Penguin Publishing Group, Mike Love, 2016, p. 97; pp. 159-160.

Dennis Wilson: The Real Beach Boy, Jon Stebbins, ECW Press, 2000 p.39.

The Beach Boys FAQ, All That’s Left to Know about America’s Band, Jon Stebbins, Backbeat Books, 2011.

When I Grow Up: The Development of the Beach Boys’ Sound (1962-1966) (Thesis), Jody O’Regan (2014). Queensland Conservatorium.

A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes: My Story, Annette Funicello, Patricia Romanowski (1994). Hyperion. p. 13.

Santoli, Lorraine (Spring 1993). “Annette – As Ears Go By”. Disney News Magazine. p. 18.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beach_Boys – retrieved April 10, 2024.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beach_Boys_Today! – retrieved April 10, 2024.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_I_Grow_Up_(To_Be_a_Man) – retrieved April 10, 2024.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_singles_of_1963 – retrieved April 12, 2024.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Hot_100_top-ten_singles_in_1963– retrieved April 12, 2024.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_singles_of_1964-– retrieved April 10, 2024.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Hot_100_top-ten_singles_in_1964 – retrieved April 12, 2024

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Hot_100_number_ones_of_1964 – retrieved April 12, 2024.

https://www.songfacts.com/lyrics/the-beach-boys/the-warmth-of-the-sun  – retrieved April 16, 2024.

Beach Boys in 1965. Public Domain.

Seafaring Treasure in Classic Rock: the backstories of Blues Image’s no.4 hit, RIDE CAPTAIN RIDE (1970) and the Beach Boys’ twice-charting SAIL ON, SAILOR (1973/1975).

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FEATURE image: “Sailing to Cape Cod” by ShaneTaremi is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Released in April 1970, Ride Captain Ride reached no.4 on Billboard charts in the U.S. and Canada. The song was no. 32 on the year-end Billboard chart for 1970. At 3:43 minutes, there was a shorter radio version.

Ride Captain Ride was a no. 4 hit in the U.S. and Canada in the spring and summer of 1970. It was written and performed by the Tampa, Florida-based rock band, Blues Image. The song is a fantasy about a captain and crew who, seeking laughter and freedom, take a trip on a mystery ship into an uncharted world.

Co-written by the band’s lead singer and guitarist Mike Pinera (b. 1948) and keyboardist “Skip” Konte (b. 1947), Ride Captain Ride sold over one million copies and was certified Gold in August 1970. Although best known for this song, Blues Image is much more than a one-hit wonder band.

Miami, Florida’s late 1960’s psych-rock music scene

Formed in Tampa in 1966, Blues Image relocated to Miami in 1968. They were key in helping promoters establish a popular new music club in Sunny Isles Beach (in a former bowling alley) called “Thee Image.” It became South Florida’s go-to venue for newly emerging psychedelic rock and it drew huge crowds.

The club featured three stages along with a meditation room and a black-light room. It booked local bands as well as name acts such as Blood, Sweat, & Tears, Cream, The Doors, the Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, the Lovin’ Spoonful, and Frank Zappa.

The club was brain-child, construction project, and congregant spot for most of the area’s hippies. The hippies brought love, peace, and sister- and brotherhood to beachfront Miami.

Jam sessions and love ins in the nearby public parks included one incident which involved the Grateful Dead, Blues Image, and about 3,000 impromptu fans. Blues Image also became one of the first rock groups to experiment with Latin-infused rock which exploded onto the wider rock music scene in the 1970s.

Ride Captain Ride is the 6th track on Blues Image’s second album, Open, released in April 1970. Written by bandmates Mike Pinera and “Skip” Konte, the song is about joining a cruise into an uncharted world. “Mystery ship” by Guru Sno Studios is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

The beginning of the end for Miami’s late 1960’s psych-rock music scene was The Doors’ concert appearance there in March 1969. Following the August 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami that nominated and elected Richard Nixon as U.S. president, local public opinion soured on the hippie subculture and Thee Image was shuttered.

That same year, in 1969, Blues Image moved to L.A., signed with Atco Records and released their debut album. Other bands relocated out of Miami – some to New York City. The cultural embers of Thee Image were transplanted to L.A. for a short time in another club – but South Florida’s psych-rock scene that featured rock’s greats had clearly ended.

In the summer of 1969, Blues Image drummer Manny Bertematti and Jimi Hendrix were seen jamming together at L.A.’s “Thee Experience,” the music club on the Sunset Strip evocative of Thee Image. In Melody Maker shortly before his death, Jimi Hendrix observed that Blues Image was “one of the best up and coming bands around.” 

Then came April 1970 and Ride Captain Ride, Blues Image’s impromptu hit. Released as the 6th track on the band’s second album, Open, the main guitar solo and fills were provided by Kent Henry with the song’s final guitar solo played by Mike Pinera. Ride Captain Ride became the no.32 ranked single on 1970’s year-end Billboard chart. Since that era, the song has been covered many times, notably by Blood, Sweat, & Tears in 1975 and by Phish from 1987 to 2013.

When Pinera left Blues Image, the group quickly broke up in 1971. Skip Konte joined Three Dog Night. Others, including Pinera, played for memorable rock bands such as Iron Butterfly, Steppenwolf, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Manassas, Jackson Browne, Joe Walsh, Alice Cooper and more.

RIDE CAPTAIN RIDE LYRICS:
Seventy three men sailed up from the San Francisco Bay
Rolled off of their ship, and here’s what they had to say
We’re callin’ everyone to ride along to another shore
We can laugh our lives away and be free once more

But no one heard them callin’, no one came at all
‘Cause they were too busy watchin’ those old raindrops fall
As a storm was blowin’ out on the peaceful sea
Seventy-three men sailin’ off to history

Ride Captain Ride upon your mystery ship
Be amazed at the friends you have here on your trip
Ride Captain Ride upon your mystery ship
On your way to a world that others might have missed

Seventy-three men sailed up from the San Francisco Bay
Got off the ship, and here’s what they had to say
We’re callin’ everyone to ride along to another shore
We can laugh our lives away and be free once more

Ride Captain Ride upon your mystery ship
Be amazed at the friends you have here on your trip
Ride Captain Ride upon your mystery ship
On your way to a world that others might have missed

Ride Captain Ride upon your mystery ship
Be amazed at the friends you have here on your trip

“Beach Boys” by mag3737 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
“Sail on, Sailor” was released in February 1973 as the album Holland’s lead single. It peaked at no. 79 on the Billboard Hot 100. When it was re-released two years later, in 1975, it jumped to no.49.

Following Blues Image’s demise, in the summer of 1972, the Beach Boys—Al Jardine, Dennis Wilson, Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, and Mike Love—decided to relocate themselves and their families to the Netherlands to record.

Once there they couldn’t find an adequate recording studio for their plans. Artistic integrity demanding it and money being no object, they imported a studio that was constructed to their specifications in a converted Dutch barn. Throughout the rest of that summer 1972, the Beach Boys, formed in 1961, recorded their 19th album entitled aptly Holland.

Producer Warner Bros. assessing that the new album lacked what they believed could be a hit single started fishing around for a possible hit song to replace another song on the album. Without a definable hit, Holland, the Beach Boys were told, was not releasable.

Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks, a collaborator on Good Vibrations and head of Warner Bros.’ new music video department in 1972, came up with Sail On, Sailor.

“I sailed an ocean, unsettled ocean Through restful waters and deep commotion Often frightened, unenlightened Sail on, sail on sailor, “ is the opening line. A sailing song for sure with deeper connotations of a searching journey with ups and downs which could be personal or professional.

The first-person narrator expounds on the individual and universal nature of the sail: “I wrest the waters, fight Neptune’s waters Sail through the sorrows of life’s marauders Unrepenting, often empty Sail on, sail on sailor.”

The music was remembered to have been drafted by Wilson in 1970 and, with Van Dyck Parks, into a fuller form in 1971. The song was then headed to Three Dog Night and had lyrics written by Ray Kennedy and Tandyn Almer.

Hearing the upbeat tune with its rich harmonies and delving backbeat as finally released, it can be easy to miss the tangle of the sailor’s story: “Seldom stumble, never crumble Try to tumble, life’s a rumble Feel the stinging I’ve been given Never ending, unrelenting Heartbreak searing, always fearing Never caring, persevering Sail on, sail on, sailor.”

In 1972, the Beach Boys’ manager Jack Rieley returned to L.A. and gave the song’s lyrics a going over. He was particularly fond of the line: ”lost like a sewer rat alone but I sail…” Officially, Sail on, Sailor listed Wilson, Almer, and Parks as its composers and Rieley and Kennedy as the lyricists. South African singer Blondie Chaplin, who had been working with the Beach Boys since 1971, became its lead vocal.

Composer Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys at the piano. At one point in the recording process, Wilson was barred from the studio for tinkering too much with “Sail On, Sailor,” the group’s intended hit song, “Rock Dreams: Brian Wilson” by Jim the Chin is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

By year’s end – it was November 28, 1972 – Brian Wilson was effectively banned from Village Recorders in L.A. Some thought he had been tinkering too much with Sail On, Sailor. Younger brother Carl Wilson was put in charge. During the hit song’s extended and close collaboration, a strong dose of these artists’ struggles is readily displayed in its words: “Always needing, even bleeding Never feeding all my feelings Damn the thunder, must I blunder There’s no wonder all I’m under Stop the crying and the lying And the sighing and my dying.”

Without an apparent hit single on the new album “Holland,” Warner Bros. wasn’t going to release it. Already in a draft form by Wilson, “Sail on, Sailor” was finished to replace another song and released in February 1973 as the album’s first single. “beach boys- holland” by cdrummbks is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Sail On, Sailor was released in February 1973 as the album Holland’s lead single. It peaked at no.79 on the Billboard Hot 100. When it was re-released as a single two years later, in 1975, it jumped to no.49. The album, also a critical success, peaked at no.36 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart and in the top 20 albums in the UK.

Sail On, Sailor has been covered many times, including recently by Los Lobos on their 2022 Grammy-Award winning Native Sons album.

SAIL ON, SAILOR LYRICS:
I sailed an ocean, unsettled ocean Through restful waters and deep commotion Often frightened, unenlightened Sail on, sail on sailor

I wrest the waters, fight Neptune’s waters Sail through the sorrows of life’s marauders Unrepenting, often empty Sail on, sail on sailor

Caught like a sewer rat alone but I sail Bought like a crust of bread, but oh do I wail

Seldom stumble, never crumble Try to tumble, life’s a rumble Feel the stinging I’ve been given Never ending, unrelenting Heartbreak searing, always fearing Never caring, persevering Sail on, sail on, sailor

I work the seaways, the gale-swept seaways Past shipwrecked daughters of wicked waters Uninspired, drenched and tired Wail on, wail on, sailor

Always needing, even bleeding Never feeding all my feelings Damn the thunder, must I blunder There’s no wonder all I’m under Stop the crying and the lying And the sighing and my dying

Sail on, sail on sailor Sail on, sail on sailor Sail on, sail on sailor Sail on, sail on sailor Sail on, sail on sailor Sail on, sail on sailor Sail on, sail on sailor

Rock ‘n roll has long shared a tuneful affinity with the seagoing life. Top rock artists followed Blues Image and the Beach Boys in their songs exploring sailing, sailors, and ships and, by turn, venturing into fantastic or rough waters.

There’s the Grateful Dead’s Lost Sailor (1980), Rod Stewart’s and Christopher Cross’s like-titled Sailing (1975 and 1980, respectively), and Crosby Stills & Nash’s Southern Cross (1981). In 1970 Van Morrison put out Into the Mystic and before that there’s Sloop John B, another Beach Boys’ performance from 1966.

Brian Wilson had adapted an actual Bahamian sea chanty for their rock version. Lyrics include “hoist[ing] up the [main] sail” and setting it. In the 21st century these classic songs still resonate on the lists of the “greatest songs of all time.”

Of the 25 or so notable covers since 1973 of the Beach Boys’ song, “Sail On, Sailor,” Jimmy Buffet’s came into port in 2003 on his compilation album, “Meet Me in Margaritaville: The Ultimate Collection.” The self-produced double album of 38 songs on MCA/Mailboat/UTV Records is, by one count, Buffet’s 37th of 50 albums in a music recording career that started in 1970. The 2003 album, certified 2x Platinum, included two brand new recordings of covers, “Sail on, Sailor,” being one of them (Harry Nilsson’s “Everybody’s Talkin'” being the other) and which Jimmy Buffet afterwards frequently performed as an encore on his live concert tours.