Mikey’s In The Mustang & “We Were Golden” bring The California Sound into the 21st century
By Kurt Beyers
“We Were Golden,” written and recorded this year, is classic, as-good-as-it-gets 1960s California beach rock. It is many other things, also, including a yet-to-be golden oldie.
It is oldie gold alright, but melted down, re-refined and crafted into something brand new. Mike Mahoney, a California native, lived that time and, with his co-writer and producer David Blackburn, wrote it into the song.
The track was released under Mike’s band name, Mikey’s In The Mustang.
“I wanted to write a tribute song to Brian Wilson for all the inspiration gave us,” he said. “Not so much the cars and the surf songs but for the romanticism of being young – the true ‘California Sound.’”
But that wasn’t actually the start. Back in the day, before the Army, before he went to Vietnam, he played in a group and wrote songs. Fifty-five years later, age 75, after success as an entrepreneur and real estate developer, he returned to his music.
“Some of my family and an old friend suggested to me that I record some of the songs I wrote back then. I never got to record them, and it was a lifelong dream to go into the studio and see what could happen. So, that is what led to the release of my album On The Road.”
It was to be a vanity album, one and done.
“But then, I thought as a final project I would write a tribute song to Brian. His music has been a soundtrack for my life.”
For youngsters, that would be Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, back when rock was not yet even a teenager.
“It was several months of us reworking it and trying to make it tell a story, to make sense. My concept was to do it in a sort of ‘Good Vibrations’ fashion, with three movements.”
First movement, the place — told in surf, sand and highway rock:
We were golden, in endless summer sand
We were golden, we thought we had it planned
Sunset Strip’s alive at night, the Byrds are on the stage
Springfield’s in the canyon — man, they’re all the rage
Second movement, the soft, slow, romantic middle — nighttime on the beach:
On that summer night, with your tender touch and kiss
I am falling in love…with you.
Finally, “the reprise,” he calls it — the music back on the road, barreling down the highway, but this time the vibe is the time, the era:
Can’t we just stay free and young, playing our guitars?
’Cuz at the battle of the bands tonight, we’re taking off for Mars
The YouTube video tells the story visually.
The tribute extends to the instrumentation. He wanted ’60s-period instruments to produce ’60s-period sound.
“One of the problems nowadays is it’s recorded digitally, and digital doesn’t let you get some of the sounds that you could get if you were doing it reel-to-reel like in 1967. So, what we used were all vintage instruments.”
Working with David as arranger and musician as well as co-writer and producer, the song became a reality.
“I’m the lyricist and the concept guy who started this project, but I decided not to sing on it because it wasn’t going to come out the way I wanted.”
What he wanted was authenticity, which is why he recruited as vocalists the Croome brothers, Patch and Liam, from their band, Daring Greatly.
“I wanted younger voices who are brothers to get the harmony that only siblings can do, like the Wilson brothers did back then,” said Mike.
He said that people who previewed the song told him it sounded like a “1967 hit that never got released.”
“That encouraged us to create a video and a Netflix-series type script, and that led to a soundtrack album to go along with the script.”
“We Were Golden” has evolved from tribute song to story to a full-blown project involving not only music but television — a streaming series or movie telling the story of “a group of college kids in 1967 who also were in a band,” to quote the elevator pitch for the script.
The key parts of the story are the band members, the innocence of their lives in Orange County in the ’60s, and the effect of the Vietnam War on them and their generation. The storyline moves to 2017 when the band reunites for “one of the concerts that they never got to do — a true homecoming.”
A Mikey’s In The Mustang concert will be filmed this spring.
Mikey’s In The Mustang is on a roll. They are not trying to turn back some cosmic clock. They are bringing something precious from that time into this one.
Ride with them and connect to Mikey’s In The Mustang on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.
https://www.amazon.com/music/player/artists/B0DJPZ4FR2/mikey's-in-the-mustang
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/mikeys-in-the-mustang/1772969040
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