Long before The Beach Boys were one of the most popular pop groups of the 1960s, they were friends, cousins, and brothers. And with each new year, as their star rose and adulthood struggles made their way into all of their lives, the divide between who the musicians were as childhood companions and who they were as world-famous pop stars widened. But some songs managed to bring them back.
“In My Room” was one such song, reminding Brian Wilson of singing harmony with his brothers, Carl and Dennis, in their bedroom in Hawthorne, California. In the liner notes of the 1990 compilation Surfer Girl/Shut Down Vol. 2, Brian wrote about teaching Carl and Dennis how to sing harmony while he sang the melody of “Ivory Tower”.
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“We all slept in the same room. One night, I sang the song ‘Ivory Tower’ to them, and they liked it. Then, a couple of weeks later, I proceeded to teach them both how to sing the harmony parts to it. It took them a little while, but they finally learned it,” Brian said. “We then sang this song night after night. It brought peace to us.”
“In My Room” Meant Even More After This Beach Boys’ Death
In one way, The Beach Boys’ “In My Room” is a heartbreakingly beautiful insight into Brian Wilson’s reclusive tendencies. The man was a musical genius. But he seemed to struggle when he was forced to be in the outside world. “In My Room” was an anthem for every quiet homebody like him. “There’s a world I can go and tell my secrets to / In my room, in my room / In this world I lock out all my worries and my fears / In my room, in my room.”
Compared to other tracks on The Beach Boys’ 1963 album, Surfer Girl, like the title track and “Little Deuce Coupe”, “In My Room” was a bit of a sleeper hit. It peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100 and, based on its retrospective praise, seemed to be one of those songs that people don’t fully appreciate until later. Even Brian Wilson found new meaning for this song in the decades that followed, transforming the song in his mind from a shy celebration of someone’s bedroom to a memorial to his late brother.
“When we recorded ‘In My Room’, there was just Dennis, Carl, and me on the first verse,” Brian wrote in the liner notes of Surfer Girl/Shut Down, Vol. 2. “We sounded just like we did in our bedroom all those nights. This story has more meaning than ever since Dennis’ death.”
After a lengthy battle with substance abuse disorder and worsening tensions with his brothers and ex-bandmates, Dennis Wilson died on December 28, 1983, by drowning in Marina Del Rey.
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