Beach Boys 4: Little Deuce Coupe

Perhaps feeling he’d exhausted the songwriting potential surfing offered, Brian Wilson decided to focus more sharply on that other Californian teen sensation: cars. What’s more, their label had already used “Shut Down” as the title track of an album that repackaged “409” and other songs about cars by other bands, as well as Robert Mitchum. So they figured they might as well repackage themselves, which is why an album released only a month after their last one repeated four songs from previous albums, including the title track of this one. Confused yet?

That title track is still primo Beach Boys, but here it’s followed by “The Ballad Of Ole Betsy”, a maudlin plaint for an automobile on its way to the scrapyard. While it may not specifically mention cars, “Be True To Your School” is one of the better high school rah-rah songs despite itself; the music makes it more than the words, which come off as the rantings of “some loud braggart”. (Co-writer Roger Christian is responsible for most of the lyrics on the album, being Brian’s go-to car expert.) “Car Crazy Cutie” is dominated by Dion and the Belmonts-style do-run-runs, and while it’s about a girl for a change, it’s not any more exciting than “Cherry, Cherry Coupe”, which was a rewrite of an earlier track and piles on the technical references.

“Spirit Of America” was supposed to pay tribute to racecar driver Craig Breedlove and his eponymous jet-propelled trike; fittingly, Capitol Records used it a decade later as the title track of the less musically successful cash-in follow-up to Endless Summer. While three of the repeats may have been worthy of hearing again, we won’t say the same for “Our Car Club”, but “No-Go Showboat” shows Brian trying to work more complicated arrangements into their albums than the usual three chords. Somewhat along the same lines, “A Young Man Is Gone” puts new lyrics eulogizing James Dean—who, or course, died in a car crash—to the lush Four Freshman-style harmonies of “Their Hearts Were Full Of Spring”. Finally, “Custom Machine” is more grandstanding, again over some unexpected chord changes.

Musically and vocally, Little Deuce Coupe certainly stands out as competent, even influential. But with only twenty minutes’ worth of new material, it offered little except to push them as a novelty act. Luckily, it was paired with a better album for its two-fer CD, which also included the rerecorded single version of “Be True To Your School”, featuring a simulation of a high school marching band and even more cheerleader chants.

The Beach Boys Little Deuce Coupe (1963)—2
1990 CD reissue: same as 1963, plus All Summer Long album and 4 extra tracks