Retro Video of the Week: "Kokomo" by The Beach Boys

Last week, I finally had the chance to watch the recent Beach Boys documentary on Disney+.  I've been a Beach Boys fan since I was a young kid, and I enjoyed the documentary, even though I thought it skipped over some things and probably could have been extended into a series to fully capture the band's story.

But I digress.  In 1988, the Beach Boys were not exactly at the forefront of popular music.  Sure, the year before, they had a #12 hit with their collaboration with The Fat Boys, "Wipeout," but they hadn't had a Top 10 hit since their 1976 cover of Chuck Berry's "Rock and Roll Music, and they hadn't had an original Top 20 hit since 1968's "Do It Again."

Enter "Kokomo," a song about a fictional island in the Florida Keys, with a more interesting background and cast of characters than I knew about.  Brian Wilson did not perform on the song, which I guess I didn't know.  The song was co-written by four legends:  Mike Love of the Beach Boys; John Phillips of The Mamas & The Papas; Scott McKenzie of '60s anthem "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" fame; and producer/songwriter Terry Melcher.  Melcher also produced the album.  As I learned while watching the Beach Boys documentary, Melcher had been connected with the Beach Boys (which I knew about), but Dennis Wilson introduced Melcher to Charles Manson, who at the time was an aspiring musician.  Manson auditioned for Melcher, and Melcher turned him down.  Not long after that, Melcher moved out of the house he had been renting.  Roman Polanski and his wife Sharon Tate moved in -- and that was the site of the Manson Family's first infamous killings in August 1969, where they killed Tate and several others in gruesome fashion.

Aside from the star songwriters, guitarist Ry Cooder contributed acoustic guitar, slide guitar, and mandolin work to the song, legendary session drummer Jim Keltner played drums, and Brian Wilson's late '60s songwriting partner Van Dyke Parks played accordion.  Oh, and John Stamos appeared in the video.

"Kokomo" ended up being an international smash.  It was featured on the soundtrack of the hit Tom Cruise/Elisabeth Shue film Cocktail, and it was nominated for a Grammy and a Golden Globe.  The song hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 -- the band's fourth #1 hit in the U.S. and first since "Good Vibrations" in 1966.  It also topped the pop charts in Australia and Iceland, and it reached the Top 10 on seven other international pop charts.

Stamos aside, the video was ranked by NME as the 17th worst video of all-time in a 2011 list, and the song has been derided rather mercilessly over the years by stuck-up critics.  At it's base, it's a catch pop song that did what so many other Beach Boys songs did:  took you to a sunny locale and made you feel warm.  On top of that, it taught you more about Caribbean geography than you probably knew before you heard the song.