Photo of singer Michi Aoyama by Co Rentmeester from LIFE magazine, 1969
Keith Moon loved the Beach Boys. A lot. He started out playing in a surf-pop band, and his love of Brian Wilson, Jan & Dean, etc. is well documented. In an interview last year, Roger Daltrey said, "He would have left the Who at the drop of a hat to join the Beach Boys." The rest of the Who never really liked the Beach Boys much, apparently, and it shows the strength of Moon's personality and his role in the band that Beach Boys touches show up in so many Who songs. This is especially true of the stuff they released in the wake of ...Sings My Generation (i.e. the Ready Steady Who EP and A Quick One), where the harmonies, surf-rock drumming, and select covers ("Bucket T" and "Barbara Ann") revealed an admiration of the brothers Wilson and Co.
The most "Beach Boys" thing Moon ever did with the Who was, in my opinion, "In the City", the b-side to the "I'm a Boy" single. Before that single's release in August of '66, Moon and John Entwhistle went into the studio without the other half of the band and recorded this odd Beach Boys pastiche - Pete Townsend apparently added some guitar to the song ex post facto, but the whole composition is a rare Moon/Entwhistle collaboration. I'm guessing that the French horn was Entwhistle's idea because it's the only thing about the song that doesn't scream, "Beach Boys!" This is my favorite era of Who music (up through my favorite Who album Sell Out), combining the raw energy of their first album with very poppy, harmony-heavy vocal arrangements. It also has fun with urbanizing a lot of the standard surf-music lyrical themes - "Well you can surf in the sea/You can swim in the pools/Do anything you wanna/Because there ain't no rules!"
"In the City" by the Who
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