The Heart of Rock and Soul by Dave Marsh

75 DON'T WORRY BABY, The Beach Bovs Produced by Brian Wilson; written by Brian Wilson and Roger Christian Capitol 5174 1964 Billboard: #24

Brian Wilson is most often celebrated for making a bunch of late sixties music nobody heard for twenty years and most weren't all that bowled over by when they did, while his best records, the Beach Boys hits of the early sixties, receive only generic critical comment - they're songs about cars, surfing, and girls, that's all. Yet Wilson was a kind of rock and roll genius not because he became a whiz at recording studio technique but because he managed to make songs about cars, surfing, girls, and the pursuit of the elusive abstraction called "fun" both personal and transcendent. The Beach Boys early singles caught the spirit of middle-class America in the pivotal stages of post-World War II affluence. Derived in equal measure from the romantic teen fantasies of Phil Spector, from the more mocking scenarios of Chuck Berry, and from harmony groups ranging from the straight pop of the Four Freshmen to the pure R&B of Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, those songs were not only filled with telling details - Wilson, a recluse himself, worked with lyricists who knew their stuff - but never ignored the downside of the dream. Songs like "Don't Worry Baby" set the stage for the latterday eschatalogical ruminations of California singer/songwriters like Jackson Browne and even Randy Newman. "Don't Worry Baby" is lush with echo and gorgeous open-throated background harmonies that set off a sweet tenor lead vocal by Wilson himself. The intro is pure Spector, as befits a song originally intended as the Ronettes' follow-up to "Be My Baby"; Hal Blaine drumbeats lead into surging harmonies, followed by a reverbless post-surf guitar slashing the meter in half. If those are "Don't Worry Baby" ' s roots, its lineage extends just as deeply into the future. Give it a country accent and you have an apotheosis of the seventies California rock epitomized by the Eagles. Similarly, Mike Love's doo-wop bass balanced by a choral backdrop drawn straight out of the Four Freshman handbook of harmonic corn sets the stage for Lindsey Buckingham's seventies arrangements for Fleetwood Mac. With "Don't Worry Baby" Wilson casually overturns everv convention of a genre he all but invented, turning melodramatic car crash numbers like "Dead Man's Curve" and "Tell Laura I Love Her" inside out. Rather than face death in order to prove his devotion or his cool. the singer is troubled because he's "shot [his] mouth off" about his car and now fears that he's going to be defeated in a drag race (and lose the car, not his life or his love). Rather than toughing it out, he confesses that he feels this foreboding all the time. It's a moment of male vulnerability that was probably unprecedented in rock and roll at that time, and one which laid the groundwork for every singer/songwriter confessional of the seventies. What rescues him from his own dread is his girl's reassurance, which she repeats to him in the title phrase. That's corny, too, but it's also extremely effective. Not to mention useful, and maybe even emotionally truthful.

Created: September 25, 2021 at 3.15 pm at http://www.lexjansen.com with FPDF 1.81

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