1964 Hit Rock Song, Written by a 21-Year-Old About Growing Old, Took 40 Takes To Record

“When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)” was a popular Beach Boys song released in 1964. It was written by 21-year-old Brian Wilson and 22-year-old Mike Love. The song reached No. 9 in the US and No. 1 in Canada.

According to The American Songwriter, Wilson told Goldmine Magazine, ”I was inspired about what it was gonna be like to grow up. Will I like the things then as I did now? I wrote that in my early twenties. As I look back on that, I am happy with my life now, and I didn’t think I would be.”

In the memoir I Am Brian Wilson, he went into more detail about the song. He said, “I think about the crazy year of 1964, and I think about one of the most important songs from that crazy year, ‘When I Grow Up (to Be a Man).’ We did that song in early August, and it was out by the end of the month. That’s how fast everything went back then. The building was going up overnight. We did that song at Western, too, in room three, which was the best. We did almost 40 takes over six days. Can you believe that? 40 takes?”

He continued, “It’s exhausting to look at and to think of how far we went in search of the perfect thing. We didn’t know we were making history. But that’s what we were making.”

Related: 1963 Song, From a Band That Formed in High School, Became a No. 1 Hit 63 Years Ago Today

Love also wrote about the inspiration behind the song in Good Vibrations: My Life As A Beach Boy. He claimed it was inspired by Wilson’s father, the band’s former manager. “Murry had bullied Brian for years,” he said. “But he increasingly called into question his manhood. ‘If you were a man, you would tell Mike to stand closer to the microphone. If you were a man, you would tell [fellow Beach Boys] Carl and Dennis to brush up on their harmonies. If you were a man …’ Man came up all the time, which probably influenced Brian’s idea behind our 1964 song, ‘When I Grow Up (to Be a Man).’”

The Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. Some of their other big hits include “Good Vibrations,” “Surfin’ USA,” “I Get Around,” and “California Girls.”