"4th of July" is a song written by Dennis Wilson and Jack Rieley for the American rock band The Beach Boys. It was recorded for the band's 1971 album Surf's Up but was not released until 1993, on the box set Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of The Beach Boys.
The song was written in 1970 as a veiled comment on the alleged suppression of the NY Times by the US government. Originally intended for the 1971 Surf's Up album, it was pulled by Dennis after an argument with brother Carl over sequencing the album.
Famous quotes containing the words july, beach and/or boys:
“This, it will be remembered, was the scene of Mrs. Rowlandson’s capture, and of other events in the Indian wars, but from this July afternoon, and under that mild exterior, those times seemed as remote as the irruption of the Goths. They were the dark age of New England.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,—at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene; their sunny lives on the sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The boys and girls are one tonight.
They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies.
They take off shoes. They turn off the light.
The glimmering creatures are full of lies.
They are eating each other. They are overfed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)