As the British Invasion commandeered the U.S. charts, only a few acts could fight back. Motown had success with Mary Wells and The Supremes, and the only other American acts to reach No. 1 on the charts in 1964 were Louis Armstrong, The Dixie Cups, The Four Seasons, Dean Martin, Roy Orbison, The Shangri Las, Lorne Greene, Bobby Vinton, and The Beach Boys. The Beatles, Peter & Gordon, The Animals, and Manfred Mann dominated the rest of the year.
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“Fun, Fun, Fun” by The Beach Boys was racing up the charts and looked poised to take the top spot when the four lads from Liverpool appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. The Beach Boys stalled at No. 5 as The Four Seasons and three Beatles songs were above them. Co-founder Brian Wilson and his brothers had to fight back—and they did, with the ’60s rock ‘n’ roll anthem “I Get Around.” Let’s look at the meaning behind the song.
Round round, get around
I get around
Yeah
(Get around round round, I get around)
I get around
(Get around round round, I get around)
My kinda town
(Get around round round, I get around)
I’m a real cool head
(Get around round round, I get around)
I’m makin’ real good bread
“Shaken Up” by The Beatles
“‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ really blew my mind. I knew we were good, but it wasn’t until The Beatles arrived that I knew we had to get going,” Wilson said in an interview with WKXJ in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1966. “The Beatles invasion shook me up a lot. They eclipsed a lot of what we’d worked for. We were naturally jealous. I just couldn’t handle the fact that there were these four guys from England coming over here to America to invade our territory. When we saw how everybody was screaming for The Beatles, it was like, whoa! We couldn’t believe it. I was shook up as hell.”
Capitol Records was releasing both Beatles’ and Beach Boys’ records, so The Beach Boys were certainly threatened by the idea their label would have to choose who got the bulk of the promotional budget moving forward.
I’m gettin’ bugged driving up and down the same old strip
I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip
My buddies and me are gettin’ real well-known
Yeah, the bad guys know us, and they leave us alone
The Answer
Wilson continued, “Michael [Love] and I went out to dinner about a week after ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ hit big, and he sat there scratching his head, saying, ‘What the f–k is going on here?’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t think we should quit. He was discouraged by the way that Beatlemania had hit America. We were very threatened by the whole thing. The Beach Boys’ supremacy as the No. 1 vocal group in America was being challenged. So we stepped on the gas a little bit.”
The answer was to go into the studio and record “I Get Around.” Wilson supplemented the normal group with a few session musicians: Hal Blaine, Steve Douglas, Jay Migliori, Glen Campbell, and Ray Pohlman. They recorded the backing track on April 2, 1964.
I get around
(Get around round round, I get around)
My kinda town
(Get around round round, I get around)
I’m a real cool head
(Get around round round, I get around)
I’m makin’ real good bread
(Get around round round, I get around)
I get around round
Get around round round, ooh
Many Interruptions
Murry Wilson, the patriarch of the Wilson family as well as band manager and taskmaster, was at the session, causing friction. He continually interrupted the recording, criticizing his son’s production and bass line. The Beach Boys fired the elder Wilson in February, but he still gave them feedback. This would continue as he would interrupt future recording sessions, most famously during “Help Me, Rhonda.”
We always take my car ’cause it’s never been beat
And we’ve never missed yet with the girls we meet
None of the guys go steady ’cause it wouldn’t be right
To leave their best girl home now on Saturday night
A Little Tinkering
In his 2016 memoir, Good Vibrations, group saxophonist/songwriter and Wilson cousin Mike Love wrote, “The lyrics, I thought, needed some work. … Brian had written lines about a guy looking for a new place to hang out. The opening was: Well, there’s a million little girls just waitin’ around / But there’s only so much to do in a little town /I get around from town to town. I thought it meandered without a strong beat. ‘Those are p—y lyrics,’ I said. ‘I went to Dorsey High, and I’m not going to sing them.’ I had another idea. ‘Why don’t we do it like this?… How about, ‘Round, round. Get around. I get around?’ ‘Whoa,’ Brian said. ‘Terrific.’ I also tinkered with Brian’s first verse, which was about this bored kid driving around but was really about our own experiences: how we had this instant fame, some fortune, had traveled all over the country, but did any of that bring us happiness? Maybe we needed to find a different kind of place.”
I get around
(Get around round round, I get around)
My kinda town
(Get around round round, I get around)
I’m a real cool head
(Get around round round, I get around)
I’m makin’ real good bread
(Get around round round, I get around)
I get around round
Ooh, ooh
The vocals were added to the backing track a week later, on April 10, 1964. Capitol would release the single in May, coupled with “Don’t Worry Baby.”
A Major Endorsement
The Beach Boys had yet to reach the U.K. charts. During their first U.S. tour, Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones heard “I Get Around” and returned to England, recommending it on television appearances and personally supplying copies to DJs on the offshore pirate radio stations. “I Get Around” peaked at No. 7 in the UK.
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Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
