The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys release Please Let Me Wonder on the B-side of ‘Do You Wanna Dance?‘ It peaks at no. 52 on Billboard. Written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love. Brian Wilson states:

I wrote that at my apartment in West Hollywood. As soon as I finished I felt I had to record it so I called up my engineer, Chuck Britz, and woke him up. ‘Please Let Me Wonder’ was recorded at 3:30 in the morning. I drove to the studio in the middle of the night and recorded it. That song was done as tribute to Phil Spector’s music. It definitely a good straight ahead feel to it. I knew I loved that song from the moment it was finished and I’ve always loved it.

Peaks at no. 5 on the Billboard charts. Written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love. Love says:

I was the one who suggested doing a song about a girl who borrows her father’s car and wrote all the words for Fun Fun Fun and told Brian it needs to start with a Chuck Berry style guitar intro.

Reaches no. 6 on the Billboard charts and no. 4 in the UPI chart survey for newspapers. It does best in Los Angeles, spending 3 weeks at no. 1. Mike Love states:

You can feel the influence of Chuck Berry in songs like ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’ which is patterned after ‘Sweet Little Sixteen,’ and songs like ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ and ‘Be True To Your School,’ so many of the songs that have the lyrical impulse that Chuck Berry would put into his songwriting.

Surfer Girl peaks at #7 in the Billboard charts, but reaches #1 in specific markets, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Boston, and Dallas. The song is written by Brian Wilson. Wilson:

When I wrote Surfer Girl I liked it so much that I said that I’m gonna keep on writing songs.

Written by Brian Wilson, Mike Love, and Gary Usher. Released in 1962 on the Surfin’ Safari album and in 1963 on the Little Deuce Coupe album. Gary Usher says:

Dennis Wilson was the first Beach Boy to pick up on surfing. He was aware of Dick Dale, the Pendleton jackets and that whole shot. It just rubbed off. I never surfed. I was a hot rod freak. I had a 409. One day we were driving up to Los Angeles looking for a part for my car, and I said ‘Let’s write a song called ‘409’. We’ll do a thing ‘giddy up, giddy up,’ meaning horses for horsepower,’ just kidding around. We came back and put it to three simple chords in five minutes, and it developed into a million-dollar car craze.