Dean Torrence was the blond falsetto-singing half of Jan and Dean, who hit #1 in the summer of 1963 with "Surf City." The excerpt below is from Torrence's 2016 autobiography Surf City: The Story of Jan and Dean. At this point in the timeline, the pair had been on the music scene for four years—their 1959"Baby Talk" single had gone Top 10—but they were in a rut and looking for something new. Enter Brian Wilson

One early spring day in 1962, Jan and I were driving to the beach in my newly custom-painted, fuel-injected Corvette. I had spent months hand-sanding the fiberglass. I had taken off all the chrome. The guy from the Japanese body shop I frequented painted the car with twenty coats of Chinese red lacquer.

The indent on the side of the car that was normally painted white at the factory, I had painted jet black. I removed the knock-off hubcaps, painted the rims jet black, and put on small, button Chevy hubcaps.

For Christmas, my girlfriend Judy had bought me a beautiful handcrafted wooden Nardi steering wheel made in Italy, and she had my name engraved on one of the polished aluminum spokes.

The radio was always on KFWB. One day, all of a sudden, this record comes on:

Surfin' is the only way, the only life for me,

so come on pretty baby and surf with me, yeah, 

bomp bomp dipadittydip, bomp bomp dipadittydip.

Jan and I looked at each other, jaws wide open.

Who the hell are these guys, and why have they stolen our 

, and they even had the gall to swipe our 

 just to really rub it in! And why the heck are they singing about surfin'?

We listened intently, and at the end of the record, the DJ said, "That's 'Surfin' by The Beach Boys."

The Beach Boys! What a great name! But still, a song about surfing? Why would anyone care? We could count on one hand all of our friends who surfed. On a big day at Malibu, there might be fifty guys. How many surfers could there be in California? A couple thousand? At most? Where else do they surf? Does anybody care about music about surfing besides surfers?

These were interesting questions, to be sure. We decided we had better keep our eye on this record. Over the next few days, we heard "Surfin'" a lot.

We called Lou [record producer Lou Adler] to see what he knew about the record. He said it was on a small independent label called Candex. The record seemed to be just more of a regional hit. It was on the national charts but just barely.

Well, I guess that answers the question, "Does anybody inland care about a record about surfing?" I guess not.

We were struggling with our own career at the time. Up to this point, we were a typical duo: two vocals with some occasional female background singers. But it had been a year since our remake of "Heart and Soul." We needed to retool our style.

Meanwhile, we had just changed labels again for the fourth time. The first record with each of our previous labels had always turned out to be a big hit, but not this time. The new company tried everything. They asked Lou to step aside and let their hot-shot young record producer Snuff Garrett have a shot at getting Jan & Dean a hit. That didn't work. Then they got so desperate they put the record company's president's kid in charge of helping us record a hit.

Now, Lenny Waronker was showing early signs of talent, to be sure, but he was sixteen years old, for God's sake. His mom had to drive him to the studio. That didn't work out so well either.

Nobody at the company had any new ideas, so they did what they usually did best - resort to old ideas. "Hey, let's put together a golden hits album," they said.

Hold on. Jan & Dean don't have enough hits to do a "golden hits" album. Well, said the record company executives, we never said 

 golden hits we are talking about, did we? So they bought the rights to those past Jan & Dean hits from the other three record labels. Then they tried to talk us into supplementing the rest of the album with our versions of 

 people's golden hits. Hey, who will know the difference? Wink, wink. For lack of anything better to do, we agreed to give it a try. We thought maybe this would give us the opportunity to experiment with other people's styles.

We got a lot of inspiration listening to a new group called The Four Seasons. Their hit "Sherry" was one great record. The lead vocal was all in falsetto, and the background parts were strong masculine four-part harmonies. The Jan & Dean trademark had been to use falsetto only at the end of a record. Maybe we should try doing a Four Seasons song on our golden hits album? And maybe look for another falsetto lead song as well?

Maybe that old song, "Barbara Ann" by The Regents would work.

That would be perfect - with the more advanced recording techniques now at our fingertips, we could sing all of the background harmony parts ourselves. The advantage here was that you would have all the same vocal tones and phrasing. This could be a really cool sound for us.

So in the studio, we started experimenting with doubling vocal parts by singing in unison to a vocal part previously recorded. This made a vocal part seem fatter, almost choir-like. We started doubling the four-part harmonies, then the lead vocals, especially the falsettos. We were onto something.

Still, when we finished the golden hits album, we knew there were a few clunkers on it that we did for the benefit of Lou's new company.

We asked the record company geniuses to put "Barbara Ann" out as a single. It was the oldest remake on the album - at least four years old by that time. Nothing else made any sense as a single. But the shitheads running the company said that "Barbara Ann" was way primitive and could never be a hit again.

Okay, but we decided that the "Barbara Ann" formula was a sound one.

So now we started looking for a song about a girl that used a girl's name in the title. Since 60 percent of rock-and-roll record buyers were teenage girls, it seemed like a good idea. Then we would sing all the lead vocals in falsetto, add lots of four-part harmonies, and throw some doo-wops in for good measure.

A friend suggested an old fifties song, "Linda."

Wow, this song fulfilled all the criteria; it was perfect. We recorded it using all our new recording techniques. The finished "Linda" recording was a breakthrough for us. Yes, the lyrics were corny, but Jan's record production was spot on. We had made a quantum leap from our last hit record, "Heart and Soul."

Our new record debuted at # 90 on the national charts on February 23, 1963. It looked like we had another hit brewing!

Then, Christ! Those surfin' guys were back! Didn't they learn their lesson? Now they have a song out titled "Surfin' Safari."

But wait a minute, it's on a serious label - a very serious label - Capitol Records. The Beach Boys are no longer in the minor leagues.

"Linda" and "Surfin' Safari" were all over the radio together. It was great.

For the most part, a majority of hit records were still coming from the East Coast. So when a local LA concert promoter went looking for acts that had records on the charts, there were not that many choices. It was inevitable that somebody would put Jan & Dean and The Beach Boys on a bill together. This pairing also saved the promoter some money.

The promoter told The Beach Boys that if they wanted the gig, they would have to back up the headliners, Jan & Dean!

They were told to learn the "vast" Jan & Dean setlist, maybe ten songs.

Five were Jan & Dean songs, five were the usual rock 'n' roll standards, including at least one Chuck Berry song since we all liked Chuck Berry.

When we showed up at the high school where the concert was to be held, we were taken to a dressing room that we were sharing with The Beach Boys. We walked in, not knowing what to expect. They were all there: Mike, Brian, Carl, Dennis, and David. They, too, didn't know what to expect.

I mean, we were the old guys, already twenty years old, with two gold records, driving shiny new Corvettes.

We all shook hands and introduced ourselves. They were just kids, nice kids, but just kids all the same. We small talked, then got down to business. We needed to run through our set and, as I remember, they were very well prepared.

We all got dressed, and the Beach Boys went on first. They played for about half an hour, and then we were introduced. We did our ten songs, bowed, and walked off.

Well, the audience wanted more. We had not thought about an encore song. It hadn't even occurred to us to do so. We thought maybe we could just stay off the stage, and the audience would give up and go home. That didn't happen. They wouldn't stop.

What the hell are we going to do now? We hadn't rehearsed any more songs with the Beach Boys. Meanwhile, the promoter was having a meltdown. The show was short by at least ten minutes - a couple of songs worth. He forced us back on stage.

We walked back on and looked at one another as if to say, "Well, what the hell do we do now?"

It would be very garage-band to repeat a song you just did a few minutes ago. The Beach Boys were willing to do it, but we really were opposed to repeating any of our songs.

"Hey, I got an idea," I told them. "Let's do 'Surfin' and 'Surfin' Safari.'"

Those were legitimate hits, not someone else's hits. It had been a while since those songs had been played.

They looked stunned and pleased at the same time, and I actually was looking forward to singing their songs. Both those tracks were a lot of fun to sing, and Jan and I had really missed singing in a vocal group - this felt like being back on stage with our old group, The Barons.

We launched into the two surf songs, Jan and I adding two extra parts. It sounded so cool. The audience loved it.

From that moment on, The Beach Boys could see we were team players, and we really respected everything they had accomplished. After the show, Jan and Brian exchanged phone numbers.

A few weeks later, we were given the green light to start an album titled "Linda." But we still needed to come up with a concept. We knew that the title to our new album would have to have the name of our latest hit single, "Linda," in it. Maybe we could record "Sherry," and even throw in "Barbara Ann."

More girls' names could always work as a concept, but then again, in the long run, we decided it was time to start to shed that teen idol crap.

We had been there and done that - time to blow it up and start a reinvention of sorts, and we would start by burning our suits!

Southern California lifestyle here we come.

The record company nitwits would go ballistic over this. Teen idol heartthrob shit was still the mainstay of the record business. Why would anybody want to tamper with this proven formula? Well, we were ready to tamper. We thought about doing some of those cool surf songs. They were really fun to sing.

The only problem was that, to date, there were only two vocal songs about surfing, and Brian Wilson had written both of them. We weren't really sure if Brian wanted us to record his songs. Then again, the Beach Boys versions had already run their course, so we thought our versions wouldn't impact their sales at all.

Jan called Brian and told him our idea: "Jan & Dean Take Linda Surfing."

That would accomplish two major goals: it would get the title "Linda" on the front of the album cover, but we would get the word "surfing" on the cover as well. Plus, graphically, we could start to explore visual beach themes: sun, sand, hot rod woodies, surfboards, ocean, palm trees—and yeah, Linda in a bathing suit.

He said as a songwriter he would be flattered if Jan & Dean did their own versions of his "Surfin'" and "Surfin' Safari" songs - not to mention that he stood to make some extra royalty money off any pending sales from the new project.

Jan recognized how stoked Brian was about the project and decided to get even bolder.

"Say, Brian, it sure would save us some time and money if you would consider coming into the recording studio and playing the instrumental tracks for us. And while you're there, you could maybe help us with the vocals, like we did on stage a couple of weeks ago."

So on March 4, 1963, we were all in the studio together recording "Surfin'" and "Surfin' Safari."

Jan and I loved it. We were finally back in a vocal band. It felt perfect.

Brian was astounded by Jan's technical knowledge in the studio, and Jan enjoyed passing the information on to Brian.

Meanwhile, Brian shared some of his vocal harmony expertise with us. Brian was more musically creative than Jan, but Jan was a brilliant technician. I was less musically knowledgeable than either of them, but I was conceptually creative, and I was almost always the one who interjected the humor into our projects. We all had different strengths, and this made for a pretty interesting team. We always had a blast recording with those guys.

After we finished the two tunes, Brian sat down at the piano and asked us if we wanted to hear The Beach Boys' next single. Of course we did.

Ahhh, excuse me, Brian. Great song, but the melody sounds exactly like "Sweet Little Sixteen" by Chuck Berry. Jan told Brian that he'd get in big trouble when Chuck heard the song. It was copyrighted, melody and lyrics, so you couldn't just take the melody and change the words. It doesn't work that way.

Jan suggested that Brian should give us "Surfin' USA" because we know Chuck, and Jan was sure that he could work it out somehow.

Brian said his dad didn't think there would be a problem, so he wasn't worried about it. He was going to keep it for the Beach Boys.

"But, you know, I do have this other surf song that's similar. I will probably do only one or the other, and 'Surfin' USA' is my favorite. So if you want, you can have the other one. You'll have to finish it. Want to hear it?"

"Okay." He sat back down at the piano and started to play:

I bought a '33 panel truck, and I call it my woody.

It's not very cherry, it's an oldie but a goodie.

"That's the first verse. What do you think?"

"The song is yours - change it any way you want to."

"Thank you so much, Brian. So what else do you have that you've lost interest in?"

"Well, I do have this other song called 'When Summer Comes Gonna Hustle You.'"

"Damn, that's a great song, too. We'll take that one too if you don't mind!"

Jan went right to work on the instrumental arrangements for both tracks. He was really pleased with the chemistry of the new studio musicians he had handpicked. Hal Blaine was on drums, Ray Pulman on bass, Leon Russell on keyboards, Glen Campbell on lead guitar, and Tommy Tedesco on rhythm guitar. Jan had also formed a special relationship with an up-and-coming studio engineer, Bones Howe. This guy was not only a great recording engineer, but he was also extremely creative.

He wanted to hear what two drummers playing at the same time sounded like. So he added our old drummer, Earl Palmer, into the mix. Jan wrote out each and every part for each instrument, including drums. So the two drummers set up their kits side by side and read off of identical charts.

What a great sound! These two tracks were the best that Jan had ever done. He had definitely arrived.

Now, with the instrumental tracks done, we were ready for the vocals.

"When Summer Comes Gonna Hustle You" was lyrically complete, so we worked on that one first. Plus, it was a pre-summer, spring semester song, and "Surf City" was definitely a summer song.

DEAN TORRENCE OF JAN AND DEAN: BRIAN WILSON GAVE US "SURF CITY" – "TAKE IT, IT'S YOURS!"

Subscribe or Login

Subscribe or Login

Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Interviews

Features

The Sunday Joint

Videos