409
1962
The Beach
Boys
I'm sitting here, looking at the calendar, and realizing
two things. 1) we're well into the 'wind-down' phase of the Summer of
2014, and 2) I haven't mentioned a certain little group from SoCal
known as 'The Beach Boys'.
I
covered their first three Top 20 hits...all surfing songs...last
summer, so I'll touch on yet another category of tunes they were
known for in this sextet of classics...car songs. Now, all three of
the Beach Boys first Top 20 hits were surfing songs, and all three
had an interesting trait in common. The 'B' sides of all three were
car songs...and the first of those 'B' side car tunes was actually
supposed to be their
first single, and therefore, was supposed
to be the 'A' side. But it didn't work out that way.
409
was the Beach Boys first single that, well, wasn't
their first single. It was on the demo tape that got farmed around to
various labels (Dot and Liberty Records earned the dubious title of
'The Labels That Turned Down The Beach Boys') and Capitol heard it,
liked it, and summarily signed them to a seven year contract. And
when I say that the suits in charge at Capitol Records heard and
liked '409', I mean that they they wanted it to be the first single,
with a little tune called Surfin' Safari as the B-side.
And that's how it was originally released...technically,
409 actually was The Beach Boys first single. Of course, when
D.J.s heard the two tunes they fell head over heels for 'Surfin'
Safari', flipped the record, and played the 'B' side instead, and
Surfin Safari actually became the Beach Boys' first single...and
first hit. (And created a rare relic worth several pockets full of
change while they were at it. Surfin Safari became the single's 'A'
side, and that's how the great majority of the singles were pressed.
Very few singles with 409 listed as the 'A' side were pressed, and if
you have one in good shape, hang on to it for dear life. It could be
worth a few Benjamins, it could!)
Because of this '409' actually wasn't a huge hit for
them...While it cracked the Billboard Hot 100, it only made it to #76
and only stayed there for a single week. This happened in October of
1962, and most songs that stay on the upper end of the Hot 100 sort
of fade into obscurity by the time 52 years have passed, but '409'
seemed to have struck a happy-nerve with a lot of people who were
teens a half century and change back. The then and still legitimately
awesome ride the song was written as a tribute to may have something
to do with that.
That
ride would be the 1961 Chevy Bel Aire Sports Coupe with a massive 409
cubic inch V-8 residing under the hood. This was in the days of
sub-40 cents-per-gallon gas, so the fact that you could all but watch
the needle on the gas gauge move towards that big 'E' when you mashed
the 'Go' pedal was of little concern. The car was meant to be fast,
and indeed, was, with
timed quarter mile runs of 12.22 seconds at 115 MPH. Thats stock,
BTW. That particular mill churned out 360 HP in it's stock version.
Let a hot rodder skilled in the fine art of engine tuning play around
with it, and it could flirt with a HP per cubic inch or better.
Supposedly.
Brian Wilson and good friend and talented music scribe Gary Usher
were cruising around looking for a part for Usher's ride (Depending
on the version of the story you hear, it was either one of the
titular 409s, or a '58 Chevy with a 348 under the hood). The two of
them started talking about writing a car song, and the aforementioned
already legendary Chevy engine came up as the subject of said song
(It was during this convo that the 'Giddy-yup Giggy-yup 409' chorus
was created).
The engine sound at the beginning of and throughout the
song was also finalized during this rolling discussion. Thing is,
when they went to record the engine sound, they didn't have a
409...instead they used Usher's 348, with open headers. (A fact that
leads me to lean very strongly towards a Chevy with a 348 as the site
of the aforementioned discussion). Brian had a Wollensack
reel-to-reel tape recorder, and they slipped the mike beneath the car
as it sat in the Wilson's driveway, fired her up, and recorded the
sweet sound of open headers.
Supposedly, this occurred at the deeply Oh-Dark-Hundred
hour of 3AM. The neighbors were not amused, nor did they care that a
legend was in the process of being created. That being the case, the
cops got involved in the song-writing process, sort of. The engine
sounds were gotten in a single take.
'409' may have only made it to 76 on the Hot 100, and
may have been demoted to 'B' side of The Beach Boys' first single,
but it's still managed to hang on in the hearts and minds of the
masses. Listen to any Oldies station for a week or so, and I can just
about guarantee you you'll hear it.
Hey, It's The Beach Boys...their songs'll still be
around after all of us are long gone!
So enjoy!! '409' by The Beach Boys!
And as a bonus...Back in '96., legitimately awesome Country crooner Junior Brown covered '409 , playing his unique Guit-Steel guitar, with The Beach Boys holding down both Harmony and Backing Vocal duties. Sounded awesome! (And was included on The Beach Boys '96 album, 'Stars and Stripes Vol 1')
And as a bonus...Back in '96., legitimately awesome Country crooner Junior Brown covered '409 , playing his unique Guit-Steel guitar, with The Beach Boys holding down both Harmony and Backing Vocal duties. Sounded awesome! (And was included on The Beach Boys '96 album, 'Stars and Stripes Vol 1')
