Song Interpretations
409, The Beach Boys
March 2, 2007
Above is the first Beach Boys Single, released June 4, 1962. The song "Surfin' Safari" hit #14 on the charts.. and Capitol Records took the hint and got them into the studio to record a full album. In this post I want to concentrate on that other song.. "409".
This song celebrating the Chevrolet 409 has two quite different album contexts. It was included on their first studio album.. Surfin' Safari.. where it stands out as the single car song among a group of songs celebrating aspects of American youth culture. A year later in the fall of 1963 the song unexpectedly got a second album setting on Little Deuce Coupe. The album consists of a group of songs on the theme of cars.. and although "409" sounds slightly archaic next to the newer songs, it retains its anchoring position.. as on the first album it is the last song on the first side.
This second album context brings to the fore the specific car knowledge contained in "409". Here it is surrounded by songs that show a deep familiarity with cars. I can hardly understand the references! Try figuring out these lines from the song "Shut Down":
Pedals to the floor hear the dual quads drink
And now the four-thirteens lead is startin to shrink
He's powered by ram induction but its understood
I got a fuel injected engine sittin' under my hood
I would almost have an easier time with Ezra Pound. There is a joyful knowingness about those lines.. Add to this "Spirit of America".. a song about the car that set the land speed record on the salt flats in Utah:
It is the kind of newspaper story that would infallibly draw the eye of a car crazy young guy.
With this car context in mind we can look at the two stanza lyrical movement that makes up "409". (I can sing these lines by heart now.)
Well I saved my pennies and I saved my dimes
For I knew there would be a time
When I would buy a brand new 409
Giddy up giddy up giddy up 409
This is a classic Brian Wilson perspective: thinking about the possibilities of growing up. I imagine a high school guy daydreaming about buying a car. Perhaps it is the same guy who defends his school in "Be True to Your School"? Someday he will get his dream car..
When I take her to the track she really shines
She always turns in the fastest times
My four speed dual quad positraction 409
Giddy up giddy up giddy up 409
Quickly we are rushed forward and the guy has his car.. which he takes down to the track. It seems like it must have been possible for guys to take their cherry coupe down to a track to test them out. His 409 succeeds at the track and then comes perhaps my all-time favorite pop-song line: "My four speed dual quad positraction 409". Every word is a mystery to me.. but they sound so good to sing!
To understand this line of masterful concision I had to Google it. The identity of the 409 I was quick to discover:
Then I found a website (Driving Today) that explained the historical context for the lines:
At the wheel of 1962 409s Hayden Profitt won the Mr. Stock Eliminator title, while "Dyno" Don Nicholson copped a second Stock Eliminator title at the Pomona Winternationals. That same year a Bel-Air sport coupe version of the car equipped with the "four-speed, dual-quad, Positraction" equipment prescribed by the Beach Boys managed an astounding 12.22-second quarter mile at 115 miles per hour. Zero to 60 miles per hour could be negotiated in four seconds flat.
On inspection the lines turn out to be a polished time capsule of American car culture. It could well be that the line was ripped directly out of a newspaper account of this speed performance. This technical line to us might have seemed the most unpromising one in the whole article.. but Brian Wilson seized it and dropped it right into the final stanza of his song.
If you ask me why the Beach Boys will last, I would say that it is not only because of Brian Wilson's harmonic genius. Another quality we love about their work is the way they freeze frame views of American material culture.. and those views sound stranger and stranger as the decades pass. He takes the technical language of daily life and plunges it into widely shared longings and fears.
The race tracks where guys could take their cars to try them out.. those may all be gone. But this car crazy world still lives on.. if only in the imagination of car buffs. Someday perhaps I will make models with Aurora.. and we will both learn something about this strange America that so naturally stands out as the classic version of ourselves.
Here is the song.. and someone has illustrated it with pictures of classic muscle cars (although not all 409s):
more song interpretations:
The Village Green Preservation Society, The Kinks
