“Surfin' Safari” by The Beach Boys

"Surfin' Safari" came out on Capitol on June 4, 1962, with "409" sharing the single, and it's also on the Beach Boys' 1962 LP Surfin' Safari. Brian Wilson and Mike Love wrote it and Love sings lead, and the blueprint was pure Chuck Berry: a dead-simple chord change plus a roll call of place names, the trick Berry pulled in "Sweet Little Sixteen". Brian called it a silly song, built on a C-F-G pattern he stumbled on while trying to play piano the way Berry played guitar.

Here the place names are Southern California surf spots, Malibu, Rincon, Huntington and more, with a detour to Narrabeen on Australia's east coast, and the beach slang came courtesy of surfer Jimmy Bowles, whose sister Judy was Brian's new girlfriend. Murry Wilson and Nick Venet produced; Chuck Britz engineered.

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