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California Unplugged: “Barbara Ann” by The Beach Boys

By Marcello Carlin



There is something ironic about the fact that the Beach Boys’ only appearance in this list is with their most spontaneous and least thought-through record, not to mention that “Barbara Ann” also proved to be their big British breakthrough hit, much to the annoyance of some of the group (“I Get Around” had made the UK top ten in 1964, largely because the Beach Boys came to Britain to promote it, but their subsequent singles tended to stall in the mid-twenties under the presumption that they were “too American” for British ears).

“Barbara Ann” is the song which closes the Beach Boys’ Party! album. Capitol demanded new product for Christmas ’65 but Brian refused to be rushed into new material; they had already released a Christmas album and a live album and it was too early for a greatest hits compilation, so the compromise of a “party” record – which in the mid-sixties was unprecedented for a pop group – was reached. Actually the party was in the studio and aided with sound-effects, and was no more a real party or gig than the records that David Axelrod had got Cannonball Adderley and Lou Rawls to make for Capitol. But the good-time atmosphere worked for fans.

A third point of irony is that Brian had Pet Sounds and presumably the embryo of “Good Vibrations” in his head while making this record. Listening to their reading of the Regents’ 1961 doo-wop hit, however, this record isn’t really that far away from “Good Vibrations.” On the album it starts with some tuning-up and a chorus of “Baa Baa Black Sheep” before the group hits the song proper, with Brian doing the “baa baa baa”s and the visiting Dean Torrence taking the falsetto lead. The song then collapses, via ashtrays and laughter, into several one-more-once false endings. But the vibrations here are indeed good and the Beach Boys letting their hair down proved refreshing enough for “Barbara Ann” to appear here. Their subsequent work was loved in Britain and remains sorely misunderstood by American critics, concerned with remembering their youth rather than assessing the music honestly. There isn’t anything here to raise the suspicion that by the end of the same year they’d have overtaken the Beatles, although perhaps that carefree feeling was being steadily rubbed out by an uncomfortable soul. Still, even in this embryonic form, there lie the seeds of what is shortly to come; and, as Lena reminds me, there is no more radiant reminder of what it was like to grow up in late sixties/early seventies California than the music of the Beach Boys.

Date Record Made Number Two: 29 January 1966
Number Of Weeks At Number Two: 2
Records At Number One: “We Can Work It Out” by The Beatles and “My Love” by Petula Clark
UK Chart Position: 3

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