Music for a simpler place and time

Remember when you were 16?

Remember what it felt like to fall in love for the first time ... and then to have your heart broken?

Most of the kids who came of age in the '60s, at least in this country, may have loved and appreciated the Beatles. But for most of us, the group that seemed to sing the best songs about what it was like to be a teenager with all of a teenager's problems was the Beach Boys.

Whether it was "In My Room" and its haunting melody, "I Get Around" with its bouncy upbeat feeling or "Wouldn't it Be Nice" with its age-old yearning to be older, so we "wouldn't have to wait so long," the boys from Hawthorne, California, nailed the subspecies known as Teenagerus Americanus.

Every 2-3 months while I was in high school, just as one hit was falling down the charts, a new one came along to pick up my spirits. "Wendy," "Dance Dance Dance," "Help Me Rhonda," "Don't Worry Baby," "California Girls" ... The hits really did just keep on coming.

And along the way, they made at least one East Coast kid yearn for that warm California sun and the beaches full of surfers and all those lovely California girls.

But there was one Beach Boys song. almost forgotten because it wasn't a hit record, that was so beautiful it still brings a tear to my eyes. It was the B-side of "Do You Wanna Dance," which was itself a remake of an old '50s hit by Bobby Freeman.

Brian Wilson's "Please Let Me Wonder" was the story of a guy sitting and talking to a girl he loves. He knows it isn't going to work out, so he asks to be spared. He says, "Please let me wonder if I was the one you loved, if I knew your dreams."

As with almost anything else these days, I found it on YouTube.



I was 15 when it came out, falling in and out of unrequited love every week or two. I'm long past that now. I had my own "Please Let Me Wonder" moment in 1979 when my first marriage fell apart, and I had several in the decade after that.

It's still a beautiful song, and the Beach Boys' music can take me back to a simpler place and time like none other can.