Back in the ’60s, a love of pop music could see you in one of two camps; you were either a fan of the English beat music of The Beatles, or you were a fan of The Beach Boys’ American surf-rock style of playing. Wherever your allegiances may lie, the fact remains that the band’s members were considered musical geniuses at the time. However, that was not always the case.

As The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson recently took to Twitter to reveal, 1959 saw a then-teenaged Brian Wilson submit a song for his high school music class, which received an F from his teacher. As Wilson’s teacher, Fred Morgan was reportedly quoted as saying, “Brian wrote a composition for me and it turned out to be ‘Surfin.’ That composition got an F, but it made a million dollars.”

Now, almost 60 years later, Brian Wilson has had that failing grade changed to an A by the current principle of Hawthorne High School, in California.

‘Surfin” was released as The Beach Boys’ first single back in 1961, and in addition to becoming the group’s first charting hit, helped to cement the group’s status as one of the finest examples of the California Sound – the special breed of pop and rock music the group helped to curate.

So there you go, if you feel like you were once hard done by thanks to an unscrupulous high school teacher, just do your best to make millions out of that assignment. Who knows, maybe in 59 years time you’ll be able to get that year 10 maths assignment changed to an A, right?

Check out The Beach Boys’ ‘Surfin”:

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