The Beach Boys: "Help Me, Rhonda"

June 7, 1965 (1 week)

So, I woke up the other day to the sad news that Brian Wilson had passed away. Coming just two days after the death of Sly Stone, this week has been a stark reminder that the pop-rock royalty of the sixties are gradually leaving us. I will confess that instead of feeling gutted by the news, I was excited to be able to blog about one of his band's biggest hits, even if it's not one of my favourites. I was determined to finish it off that day in tribute, only to work on it for a while and then leave it behind. Still, here it is. It's too bad that The Beach Boys' story has to conclude here. They came tantalizingly close to having several more number ones — "California Girls", "Barbara Ann", "Sloop John B" and "Good Vibrations" all peaked at number two on the RPM charts over the next year or so — but it wasn't to be. On the bright side, at least this means I won't have to write about bloody "Kokomo" either. Though he would compose many hits for his group, some of Brian Wilson's best loved numbers weren't especially successful. "Sail on, Sailor", my own personal favourite, barely registered at the time. I Just Wasn't Made for These Times. Indeed.

As I have previously discussed, I am fond of The Beach Boys' ninth studio album Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!). Some consider it to be a bit of a creative step backwards after the moody The Beach Boys Today! but I beg to differ. The sound is fuller with the Wrecking Crew being used on every cut. Yeah, a lot of the material is silly but around half of it suggests a kind of roadtrip, a juvenile travelogue that they would explore much more successfully on their marvelous 1973 album Holland.

Summer Days also includes two major hits. One of them is an absolute classic, one of the three or four best songs the group ever recorded. The other is a re-recording of a track that had already appeared on the Today album earlier in the year. It had once been a quirky little oddity but now it was a standard shiny pop hit. Guess which of the two sent The Beach Boys back to the top of the charts for a third and, ultimately, final time?

There's honestly nothing wrong with "Help Me, Rhonda" aside from the fact that I wish it had been a stronger single of theirs instead. In its early form — then titled "Help Me, Ronda" — it had been fodder for one of Brian Wilson's eccentric, uncommercial production ideas (the sound bouncing back-and-forth between the left and right channels) while employing some unusual instrumentation (the ukulele does not need to be so prominent). It's a little hokey but I admire the effort. No one foresaw it being released as a single in its own right - the Today! album had "Dance! Dance! Dance!", "When I Grow Up (to Be a Man)" and "Do You Wanna Dace?" so it was easy to see why slipped through the cracks - and even if it had been, it almost certainly would've underperformed; the similarly un-commercial "The Little Girl I Once Knew" with its dramatic use of sound drop outs ended up coming out near the end of '65 and it wasn't a major hit.

Re-tooled drastically for single release, the renamed "Help Me, Rhonda" certainly sounds like it has chart potential but this came at the expense of ironing out its unique characteristics. They got a better vocal this time out of Al Jardine — his frat boy drawl suits the role of the song's narrator who is a big time loser — but I can't really say anything else was improved upon. Included on Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) the following month, it was cagily placed at the end of side 1 right after "Girl Don't Tell Me", a song that had been the first real sign that The Beatles had been getting to Brian. A brazen copy of "Ticket to Ride", it practically screams "Remember how we knocked the Fab Four from the number one spot? Well, here's the single that did it!" (Another way of looking at it is that they copied The Beatles and then went ahead and copied themselves)

Flip over the Summer Days record (or, if you're a CD enthusiast like I am, wait for the next track) and side 2 begins with Wilson's finest Spector-influenced work. "California Girls" is perfect, a so-called "pocket symphony" that only he could have created. While still a big hit, it failed to reach number one in any territory with the exception of South Africa's Springbok Radio chart. Considering that Summer Days had already been released by this point, it's understandable that some weren't about to go out and buy a single that they already owned. Nevertheless, it's a little disappointing that a passable effort like "Help Me, Rhonda" made it all the way to the top while its vastly superior follow-up came up short. That said, that's the charts for you. They seldom work out the way that they're meant to.

Score: 6 (Unofficial score for "California Girls": 10)

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Can Con

Gordon "No-Longer-Gord" Lightfoot and Guess Who? both return to the Canadian charts and they're joined by newcomer Dianne James. I had assumed that her hit "My Guy" was a cover of the Mary Wells classic from a year earlier but it is in fact an original, one that the Saskatoon native had written herself. It sounds a little like one of those themes from a sixties spy thriller, especially with those horns blaring all over the place. There's not much to say otherwise but I'll be keen to see if she managed to sneak on to the Top 40 with any future singles. Like Brian Wilson, she might well have deserved better.