Forgotten Hits
The Story Behind The Beach Boys' Classic "The Warmth Of The Sun"
The True Story Behind THE BEACH BOYS'
Classic Song "THE WARMTH OF THE SUN"
Some forty years from now, our children will pause for a moment on September 11th and reflect on the events of that day back in 2001 when a blatant attack on our soil leveled The Twin Towers in New York City. The most popular topic of discussion that far off day will most likely be “Where were you when the second tower fell?” and friends and family of that generation will share a memory or two of where they were the moment they first realized what had actually happened on that fateful day. (With a little luck, most of the troops stationed overseas ever since will also be home with their families by then, too!)
If you were part of the original Beach Boys Generation, your emotionally scarring tell-tale target date is November 22, 1963 … the day that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot and killed in the motorcade making its way through Dealy Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Where WE were that day when we first heard the news has been forever emblazoned in our minds.
You would think that this would be the case for any American old enough to comprehend the events of that day … but we’ve found that, while pretty much everybody in The Beach Boys’ camp agrees that their beautiful ballad, ‘The Warmth Of The Sun’, was somehow inspired and / or completed around the events of that day, they all seem to have slightly different recollections surrounding the circumstances of writing this beautiful song. In fact, man for man, they each seem to tell a slightly different story … and, in some case, the same participant has varied their story over the years.
Today, on the anniversary of that fateful day in Dallas, we’ll try to sort out what we know and then leave you to draw your own conclusions.
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Recently, a team of experts selected by Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications (who celebrated their 25th anniversary this past year) decided that: "Reports of the assassination and funeral of President John F. Kennedy in 1963” tops the list of the ‘most memorable’ political moments in American radio and television history. This elite group compiled the list of the 125 most unforgettable political moments since radio's debut on Election Night 1920. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, ranked second, and the first presidential debate between Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon in 1960 ranked third.
For years, published reports (based on interviews with the song’s co-writers, Brian Wilson and Mike Love), have documented that this song was written during the hours surrounding The Kennedy Assassination. Reportedly, in a moment of grief after the assassination of President Kennedy, collaborators Brian Wilson and Mike Love locked themselves in the recording studio that same evening and poured all of their heartfelt emotion into the writing of this song. Wilson said that they were trying to evoke a feeling of a happier time and place ... and ‘The Warmth of the Sun’ not only achieves that goal but also maintains The Beach Boys’ ties to the surfing phenomenon that launched their career in the first place. That brief synopsis (along with the news of The Museum of Broadcast Communications poll) first appeared in our Forgotten Hits Newsletter back on November 22, 2007, along with a couple of quotes from Brian Wilson to substantiate this claim.
We were immediately besieged with alternate versions of the story … some by folks who were there at the time and some who had heard things differently over the years by way of interviews with the two key players, Brian Wilson and Mike Love.
Noted Rock and Roll Photographer Michael Bush, who has spent a fair amount of time in the touring company of The Beach Boys told us:
“’The Warmth of the Sun’ was written the night before JFK was assassinated. I’ve spent a lot of time with The Beach Boys over the years and I’ve heard Mike (Love) tell this story more than once. He says there was a melancholy feeling in the air when they were writing and finding out about JFK the morning after they wrote it kind of freaked them out!”
Fred Vail, who at the time was The Beach Boys’ concert promoter and advance man, had a different version of the story to share:
“We played a show in Marysville, California, that evening and, after we drove back to the El Dorado Hotel in Sacramento, some fifty miles away, Brian and Mike wrote ‘Warmth of the Sun.’”
In fact, Fred has long documented this story on his website: http://denniswilsonforever.wg-net.com/fred.html
He even has a copy of the original tour poster promoting that show on that date for view on this site. (We’ve included it at the end of this article as well.) If this is true, Mike and Brian did not meet up at the studio … or Brian’s office that evening to work on the song … they were hundreds of miles away on tour at the time!
So I decided to dig a little deeper to see if we could find anything that would corroborate any version of these stories.
Starting with commentary made by Brian in various CD booklets, interviews and his own biography, I found that, in virtually every source where this song's origins were documented and discussed, it was always attributed to having been written after the Kennedy assassination … when both Mike and Brian were feeling completely distraught … as was the rest of the nation! (The big difference, of course, was the fact that these guys had the talent to express their feelings in a much more melodic way!!!)
In his own (albeit ghost-written) autobiography, Brian says:
"In November, the day after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Mike and I got together and wrote 'The Warmth Of The Sun,' a plaintive melancholy ballad that expressed our sentiments, beginning 'What good is the dawn that grows into day? The sunset at night or living this way?'"
(The way I seem to remember the story most often being told is that Brian and Mike were SO bummed out over the events of the day that they just went to the studio that night … or, in some publications, Brian’s office … just to hang out, not even thinking about writing or recording anything. They were too overcome with grief and disbelief over the tragic events in Dallas that afternoon. Feeling very melancholy, the sadness came out in what eventually became ‘The Warmth of the Sun’, one of their prettiest and most heartfelt ballads.)
In the self-penned liner notes to The Beach Boys Classics CD (songs selected by Brian Wilson himself), Brian writes:
"I wrote this in honor of President John F. Kennedy. He was assassinated on November 22nd, 1963 and that night, Mike and I got together at my office in Hollywood and wrote the song."
In the liner notes to the Shut Down, Volume 2 CD, Wilson wrote:
"The day after President Kennedy was assassinated, Mike and I went to my office in Hollywood and wrote 'The Warmth of the Sun' at my piano. We knew that we had a spiritual song on our hands and we recorded it with that kind of attitude." In the liner notes for the same CD, noted Beach Boys Historian David Leaf writes:
"The song was written on November 23, 1963, only hours after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Brian had just broken up with his first serious girlfriend. This melancholy ballad and beautiful lyric perfectly capture that feeling of loss. He clearly feels the pain but he is at peace."
During a special podcast broadcast during the summer of last year, Brian again recalled the significance of this beautiful ballad, although this time he spoke more of the beauty of the song than any inspiring circumstances:
"When I listen to 'The Warmth of the Sun' I ask myself, ‘How the hell did I sing so sweetly?’ I get real, real good memories about writing 'The Warmth of the Sun.' It took Mike and I 45 minutes to write that song. That's how fast we worked. Some of the best songs come pretty quick; they're the most divinely-inspired songs."
In an interview with Endless Summer Quarterly late last year, Mike Love remembered it this way:
"’The Warmth of the Sun' was a very mystical experience. Brian and I were actually writing that (song) the night before President Kennedy was assassinated, so it was November, 1963. Brian and I were at a rented house in Hawthorne, CA. He had moved out of his family place because (his father) Murry was just too much to deal with. I'd gone over and spent the night there. Around 11 PM or midnight we were writing this song, and Brian had this beautifully haunting melody going. I just related the loss of someone you love. I wrote the words accordingly. There was a very mystical eerie feeling associated with writing the song before we went to sleep. The next morning we woke-up and we heard that President Kennedy had been shot (and of course, later we heard that he had been assassinated). "When we recorded the song a few days later it had quite an eerie, mystical and moody feeling attached to it (and it always has) for me. It has that haunting melancholy to it. Brian has always had that melancholy side in his nature and I've always had the more positive approach (lyrically) to things to counter-balance his melancholy. In the case of 'The Warmth of the Sun,' you have the melody and the harmonies, but the lyrics 'still I have the warmth of the sun within me tonight.' In other words, even though it was a negative or hurtful experience, you still came out of it with something good or positive. I was trying (in my own way) to stay true to the feeling and the mood of the song, but also give it some sort of salvation in that there was some thing good that came out of the experience even though it was hurtful."
Here is where some of this story starts to fall apart. While it’s entirely possibly (maybe even likely) that Brian already had some type of melody working in his head … (let’s face it … it wasn’t at ALL uncommon for The Beach Boys to rework the same melody into different songs during the early years!) … and just as likely that ‘The Warmth Of The Sun’ was not completed in one sitting (although Brian himself just told us a moment ago that the song took all of 45 minutes to complete) … the circumstances as described by both Mike and Brian don’t hold water when you consider the fact that The Beach Boys were out on the road at the time … and, in fact, played a concert performance in Marysville, California on the evening of the assassination! Now I suppose that it's entirely possible that Mike and Brian woke up to the news of President Kennedy’s assassination ... as I recall, he was officially pronounced dead at 1 PM Chicago Time ... when you factor in the time change, it's probably more likely than not that these rock and rollers wouldn't have been up much before 11 AM their time, especially after performing in concert the night before!!! Contrary to Mike’s accounting that they then recorded the song “a few days later,” Capitol Records Studio records show that The Beach Boys recorded ‘The Warmth of the Sun’ on January 1, 1964 … 40 days after the assassination … nearly six weeks after the song was first written. If Mike’s timeline can be off by 5 ½ weeks in this instance, the possibility certainly exists that it could be off by as much as 24 hours in the other instance.
Courtesy of ALAN BOYD of CAPITOL RECORDS, here is a copy of the ORIGINAL Union Contract for the Recording Session Held That Day
Acknowledging that after 44 years, memories fade (although it seems that anyone else who was alive that fateful day of November 22, 1963 remembers exactly where they were and what they were doing when they first heard the news of Kennedy’s death) ... as well as the possibility that oft-repeated "folklore" sometimes makes for a much more interesting "history" than accuracy ... we were willing to let things sit at a stand-off regarding this issue … even accepting the possibility that the song may have been started prior to hearing the news out of Dallas and then wrapped up sometime in the day (or days) following the event. But then we received some documentation from Beach Boys’ Friend and Promoter (and later Manager) Fred Vail who shed some very different light on this subject. Fred basically told us that, despite numerous reports and recollections to the contrary, Brian and Mike did not go into the office or the studio the night of or after the assassination to write ‘The Warmth of the Sun’ because, as you'll see in his “hands-on” report, they had a show to do that night!!! Fred was there with The Beach Boys that night ... the night of November 22, 1963, when, despite serious considerations to the contrary, they took the stage and performed a live concert in Marysville, California … and this is what he told us during our exclusive Forgotten Hits Interview earlier this year:
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It would be interesting to get Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Fred Vail in a room together one day and see, once and for all, if rehashing this story between the three of them might, in fact, spark one or two more details … or refresh a memory here and there based on a collective accounting of the events of that day in November so long ago when an entire nation grieved. Until that happens, however, we’ve got to go along with “the most accurate truth” that we can reconstruct and take pride in knowing that even on the saddest of days, the music of The Beach Boys brought joy and happiness to their audience. It always has … and it always will.
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Courtesy of Fred Vail, here is a copy of the actual promotional poster for the concert
that night ... November 22, 1963 ... at THE MARYSVILLE MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM
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I asked Fred what he could tell us about the actual recording of the song "The Warmth Of The Sun" ... when (in proximity to writing it did they go into the studio to record it) and this is what he had to say:
FRED VAIL: As to the 'recording' of "Warmth," after doing my own research and speaking to Alan Boyd, certainly one of the true 'authorities' on the group, as well as the guy who has put together a number of CD compilations for Capital Records, he feels comfortable with the Jan 1, 1964 date and found evidence to that effect on a union contract for that date.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: You can view the Union Contract / Studio Log for that session above.)
(EDITOR'S NOTE: You can view the Union Contract / Studio Log for that session above.)
However, it was not unusual for Brian (or Capital) to combine songs on union contracts so that musicians could be paid quicker, and -- often -- the tracking sessions did not include the entire vocal overdub process, but we're going with the Jan 1 date.
I was at Western Recording on Jan 1, 1964 -- I'd been with the group at a New Years Eve gig at Bob Eubanks' Cinnamon Cinder Teen Club in San Bernardino the night before. The primary song on that recording date was "Fun, Fun, Fun," but "Warmth" was added to the session. Carl, Alan, Dennis, Mike and Brian all participated in the session, but there were 'wrecking crew' members there as well. I remember Hal Blaine (Drums) being there and I'm pretty sure that Steve Douglas and Jay Migliori (Sax) were also there, as was Ray Pohlman (bass).