Super 60's Tune for Friday, July 24th, '09

"Dead Man's Curve" might be, other than "The Little Old Lady (From Pasadena)," Jan & Dean's most famous song besides "Surf City." And like many Jan & Dean songs, it had a wide streak of humor beneath the standard catchy harmonized surf- hot rod surface, though the humor in this ditty was more morbid than most. "Dead Man's Curve" is the ultimate hokey hot rod drama: not a tale of how the narrator was going to outrace all the other young dudes on the block, but of how his recklessness finally catches up with him on one of the most treacherous routes of all. In that sense, it borrowed from the melodramatic teen death hits that were in vogue in the late '50s and early '60s ( "Teen Angel" et al.), though the melodrama here was matched with higher musical craft and a slightly tongue-in-cheek humor that didn't take the tragedy too seriously. The track is introduced by fanfare trumpets, as if announcing the entry of gladiators into an arena, but quickly fattened out with more standard mid-'60s Southern Californian rock production. The verses are very much in the mold of Jan & Dean and the Beach Boys' early hits: a Chuck Berry-derived narrative structure, though with more melodic flexibility, telling the story of a devastating hot rod crash with just a touch of sardonic wit. The parts that really grabbed your attention, though, were the choruses in which the grandiosity of co-songwriter Brian Wilson's melodies asserted themselves against more trumpet blares and swirling harmonies. These resolved on (one would guess Wilson-originated) unexpected but memorable melodic jumps as the voices came together to warn against dead man's curve. Sound effects of brake screeches, and ultimately an actual auto crash, added to the melodramatic camp, climaxing in the most overtly satirical section in which a spoken voice recounts the accident to a doctor as a harp and punctuations of crashing chords heighten the tragedy of the accident. We know it can't be all that bad, though, because the boys launch into a final run-through, the choral warning to avoid "Dead Man's Curve." It was all intended in fun, but the song took on an unintended prophetic quality of actual tragedy when Jan Berry sustained permanent serious brain damage in a major auto accident a couple of years later. The accident happened near, but not exactly on, the site of the actual Dead Man's Curve in Los Angeles on which the song was based.