Hello and thank you for downloading Witness, the History Program from the BBC World Service.

And today we're going back 50 years to the release of one of the biggest pop songs of the 1960s.

Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys. I'm Lucy Burns and I've been speaking to Beach Boy

Mike Love about the where and the way the sunlight plays upon her head.

The track itself was so strange and so different from what we had ordinarily done. I thought,

how is this going to go over with our fans? But I figured there's one thing that everybody

understands, and that's the attraction between a guy and a girl.

Mike Love singer of the Beach Boys. He started the band in the early 60s with his cousins Brian,

Dennis and Carl Wilson.

It was just truly a family affair. Every holiday, every birthday party,

Thanksgiving, Christmas, always music.

Nothing do with being famous or have nothing to do with money.

It had to do with the simple joy of getting together and harmonizing together.

Managed by Mike's Uncle Murray, the Wilson brother's dad, they started making records

inspired by their Southern California lifestyles.

When I was in high school, if the surf was up, I'd get together with a couple of buddies and

we would take off and miss an afternoon class or two.

And then so Brian and I got together and came up with a song

called Surfin and this was in the fall of 1961 and incredibly it was performed

on the radio.

We were given the incredible sum of $900 by the record company

that was just a little independent record company

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