In the 2025 baseball season, the New York Mets endured a dreadful mid-summer slump. It ended any hopes of a successful season. At the time, some fans attributed it to the team’s in-house DJ playing The Beach Boys’ song “Kokomo” as a tribute to Brian Wilson on the occasion of his passing.
What’s the problem with that? Well, Wilson had absolutely zero to do with the creation of the song. In 1988, “Kokomo” revived the band’s moribund commercial prospects in a major way.
Playing the Oldies
At the start of 1988, you probably could have received lottery-winner odds on The Beach Boys hitting the top of the pop charts. The band did crack the Top 40 a few times in the 80s prior to that. But those tracks were either nostalgia trips (“The Beach Boys Medley”) or novelties (“Wipeout!”, a collaboration with rappers The Fat Boys).
The band had mostly given up on the idea of pushing new musical boundaries since 1974. That’s when the compilation Endless Summer convinced them that concerts featuring their old hits offered the best path to financial security. New studio albums generally played it extremely safe.
Brian Wilson’s personal struggles also contributed to the band’s decline in the modern pop zeitgeist. Without Wilson operating at 100 percent, The Beach Boys lacked a visionary able to make them relevant in the current scene. Yet they ended up at No. 1 anyway. An earworm given a boost from a hit movie made it happen.
A Movie Song to the Rescue
When The Beach Boys were approached to create a song for the movie Cocktail, starring Tom Cruise, they jumped at the offer. They knew that the song was supposed to accompany a scene of Cruise’s character heading to Jamaica. Thus, they sought something with island vibes. Songwriters-for-hire John Phillips (formerly of The Mamas & The Papas) and Scott McKenzie (of “It Never Rains In Southern California” fame) went to work.
Mike Love of The Beach Boys made alterations to the demo. He added the litany of tropical locations that adorns the song’s chorus. Track producer Terry Melcher also made some contributions to the writing. Love sang lead on the verses. Carl Wilson took over in the sections following the sing-along chorus.
Van Dyke Parks, who co-wrote the unfinished Smile project with Brian Wilson, played accordion on the track. “Kokomo” didn’t do much upon initial release. But as the movie’s popularity grew, so did the song’s. It hit No. 1. And not many people even noticed at the time that the group’s most famous member was nowhere to be found in the credits.
Where was Brian?
Because “Kokomo” came during the time when Brian Wilson was under the restrictive guidance of psychiatrist Eugene Landy, it’s difficult to pinpoint why he wasn’t involved. Some claim that Wilson was asked to write the song for the movie, only to have Landy nix the idea.
There are other reports claiming that Brian, at that point somewhat estranged from his bandmates, chose instead to concentrate on a solo album that he was making. Whatever the reason, he didn’t participate in what turned out to be the final No. 1 hit of the band’s illustrious career.
Brian Wilson didn’t talk much about “Kokomo” after the fact, other than to say that he liked the song even if it didn’t quite remind him of a Beach Boys number. And how could it without his writing input or vocal contributions?
(Photo by L. Cohen/WireImage)
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