Posted on 02/04/2026 1:30:42 PM PST by nickcarraway
The Beach Boys ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ is one of their best-loved numbers, and a highlight of their live shows since it was released.
The Beach Boys’ “Fun, Fun, Fun” is one of their best-loved numbers, and a highlight of their live shows for the past 50 years. Released on February 3, 1964, it entered the Billboard Hot 100 on February 15 at No.69 and on the week of March 21, it climbed to No.5 on the charts. It was kept from climbing any higher by three Beatles singles, “She Loves You,” “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” and “Please Please Me,” with the Four Seasons, “Dawn (Go Away)” holding down the fourth spot. Perhaps most surprising of all, given its popularity, is that “Fun Fun Fun” never made the UK chart.
It’s a great example of the way things were done back in the 60s. The Beach Boys recorded “Fun, Fun, Fun” only six weeks earlier on New Year’s Day 1964. Beginning at shortly after mid-day at Western Recorders in Hollywood, the Beach Boys were all there, along with drummer Hal Blaine, saxophonists, Steve Douglas, Ed Migliori, and bass player Ray Pohlman. As Brian Wilson would later tell Newsweek magazine, “I could go into the studio and cut a record in three hours. I’d say, ‘Hey we’ll make the best record ever tonight.’ I had that kind of spirit – and goddamn if it didn’t work!”
This was the start of The Beach Boys recording their new album, Shut Down Vol.2 and “Fun Fun Fun” was first attempted by the group working on a slower version of the song. Mike Love’s lead vocals were added to the backing track, followed by percussion and guitar parts inserted. There then followed 19 takes of recording the backing vocals that completed work on what is for many a masterpiece of the California sound.
What is it that makes the song work so well? Well, there’s the driving beat and the underpinning of everything by the fabulous bass line and the honking saxes of Douglas and Migliori giving it a fuller sound than many other records at the time. The song is written by Mike Love and Brian Wilson, Love the lyricist, Wilson the music. It is Mike’s brilliant evocation of what people around the world imagined to be the American dream– or the California dream of living in the Sunshine State. To round it all off, there are the great harmony vocals.
Both the stereo and mono versions were done at the New Year’s Day session; the difference between the two is that the stereo mix fades out early, with the instruments fading away before the vocals. The mono mix, on the single release as well as mono copies of Shut Down Vol. 2 features an extended outro.
The “hamburger stand” was the Foster Freeze on Hawthorne Boulevard, around 119th Street. Further north Hawthorne turns into La Brea, same street, different name.
When I lived in Hawthorne in the mid 1980s I used to get root beer floats at the Foster Freeze on La Brea in Inglewood. I never went to the one in the song although I passed by it a million times when I lived in Hawthorne in the 1980s. I did once go to the library (like she told her old man, yeah). It was just a few blocks away from the hamburger stand. There was also a googie style diner further south on Hawthorne named Holly’s I went to once. Later it became the Hawthorne Grill, used in the Pulp Fiction movie.
I lived on 146th Street, about three full, and two partial, very boring residential blocks away from Marilyn Monroe’s childhood home. I found out that she had lived in that area only about five years ago.
🎶🎶 Ridin’ Waves 🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊 and
Blastin’ Pigeons 🐦🐦🐦🐦🐦 🎶🎶
Great song.
One of many.
The Beach Boys were superb.
It is not a coincidence that you see 1966 as Peak California.
The Hart-Celler Immigration Act passed in 1965, opening California to a tsunami of 3rd world immigration, and it put an end to the California that was America.
I moved to SoCal in 1966 and have had a front row seat to watch its Decline and Fall ever since.
California transformed from the Beach Boys and Leave It To Beaver into the alien cultural mess that it is thanks to the pressure of vastly too much immigration, legal as well as illegal. And for decades the worthless GOP cheered it on.
Now it’s “crap, crap, crap!”. Until grabem takes your T-bird away......🤔. Someone could do a parody. 😊👍
21st Century music sucks.
That California died long ago.
Good point.
My Dad lived in Santa Barbara in the early/mid-50s doing roofing work and racing cars after he got out the Navy. He moved back to Detroit in the late 50s. I had just one question for him: WHY? 😄.. Beaches, babes, and fast cars = the life...
They were arguably better than the Beatles at the time. “Love Me Do?” A fricking dirge. Brian was a genius, but he flipped his noodle hard, acid casualty. Lennon checked out not long after. One of the Fleetwood Mac members was dosed at a party and never recovered. Brian Jones, Syd Barrett and quite a few others.
You can see the effects on their albums. A brief period of amazing creativity - and then it all falls apart.
Yes there was. I was a teenager in Southern California in the 1960s and it was almost Paradise. Cruising Main St. and the drive in restaurant with waitresses on skates bringing your food on a tray to your car, just like the movie "American Graffiti." Meeting girls, with The Beach Boys and Beatles music blasting out of car speakers. No illegals to be found anywhere. No other language to be heard but English.
Indeed, except for the smog, which is now mostly gone, living in Southern California at the time was a joy. Although the Dodgers didn't do very well that year, the USC Trojans shone, concluding their season with an upset win over Notre Dame.
In Whittier, where I grew up, teenagers in the mid-sixties would drive to Whittier Blvd. to “cruise.” If you had to go anywhere on Friday and Saturday nights, you had to avoid Whittier Blvd. Bob’s Big Boy, a hamburger joint that opened in 1960 but is long gone, was a popular spot for cruisers to hang out, as was the Jam Inn, a burger joint that survives as a Mexican restaurant.
Libraries are vital institutions, yet they are almost never mentioned in songs. "Fun, Fun, Fun" is just about the only song I know of that mentions libraries. The only other song that might be interpreted as relating to librarianship is Information Blues by Roy Milton (1950).
Dawn should take the singer's advice and go away. Unlike Jerry Cole in Midnight Mary, which was riding the charts at the same time, the singer has no ambitions or plans to improve his life.
I am a California born and raised contrarian.
I always thought the Beach boys and Jan n Dean stuff was sappy goofy crap.
Of course, I did not like the Beatles either.
Thee Midniters did a song about WB. Wolfman Jack played it on the Big X..
Whittier Boulevard--Thee Midniters (1965)
Down Whittier Boulevard--Thee Midniters (1967)
Bach and Handel more your speed?
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