"4th of July" is a song written by Dennis Wilson and Jack Rieley for the American rock band The Beach Boys. It was recorded for the band's 1971 album Surf's Up but was not released until 1993, on the box set Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of The Beach Boys.
The song was written in 1970 as a veiled comment on the alleged suppression of the NY Times by the US government. Originally intended for the 1971 Surf's Up album, it was pulled by Dennis after an argument with brother Carl over sequencing the album.
Famous quotes containing the words july, beach and/or boys:
“People in Stamps used to say that the whites in our town were so prejudiced that a Negro couldn’t buy vanilla ice cream. Except on July Fourth. Other days he had to be satisfied with chocolate.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
““Now what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of service to them.””
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)