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THE BEACH BOYS AND ANDY WILLIAMS - Little Honda (as: Little Cycle) (1965)
Wherein Mike Love coaxes middle-of-the-road pop crooner Andy Williams into the chorus of “Little Honda,” in this amiable, inter-generational mega-star mash-up from late 1965.
By this point, Williams was the highest-paid recording artist in the U.S., the informal mouthpiece for all of Henry Mancini’s Oscar-nominated songs on Academy Awards telecasts, and the host of his own variety show on NBC. For their part, The Beach Boys were the most popular American rock band in the world, and pretty much owned the Billboard charts through this particular calendar year, with three monster albums (#4, #2, #6) and three smash singles (#1, #3, #2) to back up the claim. And if that weren’t enough, leader Brian Wilson had just finished the ambitious “Little Girl I Once Knew” single and had started laying down basic tracks for what became Pet Sounds.
It’s not on the level of Elvis Presley meeting Frank Sinatra on the latter’s 1960 Timex Show, but it’s a worthy silver medallist.
Brian Wilson had retired from live performance eight months earlier, but agreed to this appearance. The band recorded backing tracks on October 20, and taped the show two days later. Vocals and Carl Wilson’s guitar were live. The show included three songs, all of which have survived on video, and we’re the better for it. “Help Me, Rhonda” is winningly buoyant, and the a cappella “Their Hearts Were Full Of Spring” captures the four-part harmony in stunning fashion, something especially apparent in the madly brilliant cold open, with the boys stepping to the mic to deliver the complex, wordless intro with goosebump-inducing precision.
And then there’s “Little Honda.”
This is the audience pander piece, the one-off curio pitting the crooner against the rockers. ”Little Honda” was an album track on 1964’s All Summer Long, but the public heard it when The Hondells took a slavish cover version to #9 on the U.S. chart. For some reason, despite a couple handfuls’ worth of Beach Boys hits to choose from, some bright spark decided this would be the song the guests and host would sing, and in a perfect example of a make-work project they had to placate nervous sponsors by replacing the brand “Honda” with the nebulous “cycle” at every turn. WTF, y’know? Although these artistic compromises mar the performance, it’s not only less gangly than the Presley-Sinatra summit from five years earlier, it’s even alright.
Andy’s a little under-rehearsed but game, giving us an amusing jig in the final chorus, and no doubt Beach Boys nerds will enjoy the “Andy, Andy, go faster, faster” backing vocals. And frankly, considering the lushness of The Beach Boys’ studio singing, and the resonant, burnished vocals on Andy’s concurrent pop LPs, there are a few spots in the piece where I can’t help thinking this gang might’ve made an interesting 45 together.
And no, man, I have no idea why Mike pronounces “cycle” as “sickle.”
