Composition
The music for the song came from Brian Wilson's first LSD experience. In the Beautiful Dreamer documentary, Wilson said that shortly after taking LSD, he ran up to a bedroom and hid under a pillow, shouting "I'm afraid of my mom, I'm afraid of my dad." Sometime later, he left the room and went to a piano. He started playing in the bass the B-F#-G# pattern over and over, and then added in the right hand after a few minutes a B chord, moving to an A chord. Within a half hour, he had come up with the "well east-coast girls are hip, I really dig the styles they wear" part of the song. The next day, he and Mike Love supposedly finished off the remainder of the song.
"California Girls" was the first Beach Boys recording to feature vocals from Bruce Johnston, who had joined the group to substitute for Brian Wilson on concert tours.
Read more about this topic: California Girls
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“It is my PRIDE, my damn’d, native, unconquerable Pride, that plunges me into Distraction. You must know that 19-20th of my Composition is Pride. I must either live a Slave, a Servant; to have no Will of my own, no Sentiments of my own which I may freely declare as such;Mor DIE—perplexing alternative!”
—Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770)
“Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“Vices enter into the composition of virtues as poisons into the composition of certain medicines. Prudence and common sense mix them together, and make excellent use of them against the misfortunes that attend human life.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)