Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys & Radical Politics
Brian Wilson who has died at 82 is best known for being a central part of the Beach Boys who produced such sublime music as Good Vibrations in the 1960s.
But there is a lot more to the story of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys including an early 1970s turn to radical politics.
In the sixties the clean shaven, youthful and smartly dressed Beach Boys appealed to what might be characterised as an ‘All-American’ constituency. The one Donald Trump might have been vaguely thinking of when he paid tribute to Brian Wilson this week.
Yet the 1960s was the time of US involvement in the Vietnam War. Clean cut fans of the Beach Boys were being despatched to the front line and finding themselves killed and injured. A powerful anti-war movement grew as part of a wider left.
The Beach Boys ditched their surfing image and produced one of the classic albums, Surfs Up (1971)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surf%27s_Up_(album)
The opening track, poignant in relation to their past, was Don’t go near the water. A song that has only grown in relevance in the intervening 54 years. Brian Wilson played a part in the production of Surfs Up and deserves to be remembered for that as well as of course Good Vibrations
Don’t go near the water
Don’t you think it’s sad
What’s happened to the water
Our water’s going bad
Oceans, rivers, lakes and streams
Have all been touched by man
The poison floating out to sea
Now threatens life on land
Don’t go near the water
Ain’t it sad
What’s happened to the water
It’s going bad
Don’t go near the water
Don’t go near the water
Toothpaste and soap will make our oceans a bubble bath
So let’s avoid an ecological aftermath
Beginning with me
Beginning with you
Don’t go near the water
To do it any wrong
To be cool with the water
Is the message of this song
Let’s all help the water
Right away
Do what we can and ought to
Let’s start today
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