Brian Wilson might have lived in his own musical world, but he still managed to keep a finger on the pulse of his local scene. He was also able to separate his ego from his music tastes, happily admitting when a song blew him away, even if he wasn’t the one who wrote it.
In his memoir, Wouldn’t It Be Nice: My Own Story, Wilson recalled one such moment after hearing The Ronettes’ 1963 hit single, “Be My Baby” for the first time. The Beach Boys founder was driving with his wife, Marilyn, when the song came on the radio. “I had to pull over,” Wilson wrote. “‘Oh, my God!’ I exclaimed. ‘This is great! It’s the best song I’ve ever heard.’” When his wife asked him to elaborate, he said, “I mean, holy s***! I can’t do that. Not that great. Not ever.”
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Wilson continued, “‘Don’t worry, baby,’ she said, rubbing my neck. ‘You will. You’ll do something that great.’” And with her words of encouragement rattling around in his head, he set out to do just that.
Brian Wilson and His Co-Writer Knew “Don’t Worry, Baby” Was a Hit
After hearing “Be My Baby” on his car radio, Brian Wilson went out and bought multiple copies of the record and “played them incessantly.” He wrote in his memoir, “I learned every note, every sound, the pulse of every groove. Finally, I called lyricist Roger Christian and told him I had an idea. He met me one afternoon at my parents’ house, where, in one of our last collaborations, we wrote a lush ballad whose title and chorus came directly from Marilyn’s comforting words, ‘Don’t Worry, Baby’. I knew the song was a smash before we finished writing it.”
Wilson told his co-writer that he wanted to give it to Phil Spector, The Ronettes’ producer responsible for the “wall of sound” production in “Be My Baby”, to record as a follow-up to the song that captured Wilson’s attention so strongly that fateful day. “I was second-guessing myself,” Wilson admitted. “I didn’t really mean it and waited for Roger to talk me out of it, hoping he would.” And that’s exactly what Christian did. Wilson decided he would keep the track and have The Beach Boys cut it.
The Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry, Baby” came out in May 1964 as the B-side to “I Get Around”. Although “Don’t Worry” didn’t perform quite as well as its A-side, peaking only at No. 24 on the Billboard Hot 100 while “I Get Around” was at No. 1, the song became one of Wilson’s first bona fide pop standards. It also gave him the confidence to pursue his own creative vision without ceding it to others.
And by the end of the decade, albums like Pet Sounds would put Wilson on the same level—even higher, in some people’s eyes—as Spector in terms of iconic, genre-defining producers.
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