Say what you want about Gen X or Gen Z, or whatever they’re called but they are far more evolved than my generation when it comes to sharing their feelings. I love how young friends hug each other and say I love you. Nothing bad can come from this. When I grew up the words, “I love you,” were not bandied about like this. Case in point: When I told a childhood friend I loved her, she said, “Oh god, Susan, am I dying?”
We didn’t hear those words growing up much in the 1970s. It just wasn’t a thing. But something happened when I left home that changed that. I started receiving letters like these on a regular basis, which still mean everything to me fifty years later.
There was no shortage of Beach Boys trivia a year ago when Brian Wilson passed away, so I waited to share some tidbits about one of my favorite songs.
Along with being regarded as one of the most beautiful pop songs ever written, Wilson’s masterpiece, God Only Knows, has an interesting history. Here are some things you may not know about this iconic track.
It was banned on release in parts of the U.S.
Strange as it seems today, there was a huge worry about using the word “God” in the title. Wilson said, “I was scared they’d ban playing it on the radio because of the title…” And, although it did get banned on the radio in some areas (mainly in the south) it generally escaped censorship.
It was originally a B-side
The record company issued God Only Knows as a single but then decided to put it on the B-side (as the flip to Wouldn’t It Be Nice), perhaps through fear of it being banned. This could be interpreted as a commercial mistake as it only reached 39 on the U.S. charts, whereas in Europe, Australia and Canada it was the A-side and a massive hit, reaching Number Two in the UK.
Brian Wilson isn’t the singer on the track
Brian Wilson is not the lead singer on God Only Knows. He originally tried singing the lead but later handed vocal duties over to his brother Carl, whose silvery tenor voice was better suited to the piece.
It was written in 45 minutes
The song is regarded as one of the most complex and unusual to have been written at that point in pop music’s history, but Brian Wilson claimed that he and Tony Asher (who usually wrote jingles) wrote it in just 45 minutes. Not bad for a song universally acclaimed as one of the greatest ever written.
It’s Paul McCartney’s favorite song
Sir Paul has commented on several occasions about his love of the song, and The Beatles were inspired to write Here, There and Everywhere after hearing Pet Sounds for the first time.
Do yourself a favor and give it a listen if you haven’t heard it in a while. You won’t be disappointed.
I’ve written about my crazy neighborhood that I kind of love. This feeling was validated recently when a beloved cat went missing.
The neighbor across the street enjoyed a wonderful vacation with her husband and son to the Grand Canyon only to return home to learn that the pet sitter had allowed their cat to get out and now Kenny had been missing for more than twenty-four hours.
I was in the middle of doing the dishes when the son rang our doorbell to show me Kenny’s picture. I immediately followed him across the street, dishrag still in hand, and joined his distraught mom in the yard of a nearby vacant house. We made our way through the overgrown yard searching for Kenny.
The radar of a pet lover on the block must have gone off because she came running over when she saw us all in the middle of the street. “What happened?” she asked. Another neighbor returned from his search with no good news, but I was heartened by how my neighbors sprang into action.
Then it started pouring rain and Kenny’s mom headed down the street, umbrella in hand calling out for her ten-year-old cat. That night on the advice of the neighborhood cat expert they put food on their front porch and left the doors to the screened in patio cracked open with a litter box, some of the owner’s clothes, and the cat’s bed, and lo and behold at 4:30 that morning the ring cam went off and Kenny was home.
Don’t you just love a happy ending?
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Thank you for visiting my blog.....blogette, really. If I've learned anything in my sixty-plus years it's that people really don't like to read so I promise to be brief. S.
