Beach Boys - Okie From Muskogee Lyrics

0:13 The beach boys are SHIT! Had to laugh, thou i like BB.

Wow, an audience full of pot-smoking, long-haired hippies singing against the very things this classic song rebukes... LOL!

Merle, who recorded a song called It's All Going to Pot with Willie Nelson, would have loved this.

The irony of this is matched by Carl's 1970s fondness for the Nudie Suits made by Nudie Cohn of Beverly Hills, also fancied by most of the male country music stars of the day. He's wearing a fine example of one in this video. Carl also used to occasionally refer to himself as "Clem Howdy" Wilson. He above all must have loved the ironic humor of the BB performing this song.

The way they dressed then looked really cool😎

Well, let me see. The first three lines of this song were true at this point for Mike Love, Al Jardine and Bruce Johnston. Other than that, the irony is rich. Carl, Dennis and Brian Wilson and a few members of their backup band smoked marijuana and did LSD (among other things) and Carl got arrested for draft evasion while pursuing conscientious objector status. Certainly long hair, beads and Roman sandals were quite prevalent at Beach Boys concerts during the late 60s and 70s. God, I would love to have been there in San Francisco when the Beach Boys jammed with the Grateful Dead on this song. The irony must have been overflowing there.

God, I wish I was there.

My god it is grandma!!!!!!!----What's she doing????????????

These cute kids are now 70 years old!

😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎
👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Forever Beach Boys

great introby mike

I was 16 at the time, I was not there and it was not in my town but I swear I know half the people there, I mean these were my friends !!

That worked surprisingly well.

Merle was from Bakersfield, CA. Half the Beach Boys were from somewhere in the Midwest.

Not exactly. Al Jardine was born in Lima, Ohio and spent some of his childhood in Rochester, NY, but moved out to California with his mom, dad and brother when he was in junior high school. Bruce Johnston spent part of his childhood in Chicago, but also moved with his family to California when he was quite young. Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson and Mike Love are all California born and bred.

Wonder what the chicas @ 2:22 are doing today?

Behold the ....Baby Boom generation

bruce on bass

Love this !

This song doesn't actually criticize hippies. It says the Okies don't wear or do things which the hippies do.Fantastic rendition.

Those fools have no clue what they’re listening too.

Love your videos. Thank you!

Love their version of this song

The beach boys won the greatest bands that ever existed and they were supposed to be the all American band and yet they took drugs and they abused alcohol but they were still won the best bands that ever existed

Best! Like from Russia!

Tickets were probably $10-$20

CCR members too in the audience?

makes me wish they recorded a whole album of stuff like this

That was why Beach Boys were a kickass band.
They could play this with irony, but as cool as possible.
And these were cool times, because everybody having fun without any shitty ultra-liberal-leftist complainment.

Do you hayseeds realize that Merle was criticizing his own people in the Muskogee song? Merle was as big a waster as any of these hippies. "Muskogee" is criticism of small-minded people. Now you may like the song -- we all do -- but stop the KKK-Trump-Tea Party-White Supremacist crap. It doesn't look good on people with no education!

No-one does this like the "writer" of the song, Merle Haggard. Congratulations for trying boys. Desmond Kelly.

CCR members too joined

I would bet a lot of money that place smelled like a barnyard

Stale ponchos, patchouli and body odor ...

Is that how people acted back then?

Was Brian Wilson (bass player with serious drug addiction issues) present at this 1971 concert? Does anyone know? Also, I wonder who was playing bass at this show in place of Brian Wilson. Beach Boys had great harmonies anyways!

Beach boys?! Look more like hobo boys to me.

Who is the guy in the orange t shirt and hat behind mike love? You can see him at 2mins 56secs. Is he grateful dead?

Age of music...
No doubt 21th century sucks ass.

social documentary

I'm sure I saw Billy Joel in there

this is the best version .

funny, this version is being played "straight"(perhaps unintentionally)  and being taken ironically by the audience, while the original version was performed ironically and taken by the audience as "straight."

Righteous!

You've got to have the at least the talent and voice of Merle Haggard to sing this tune properly... the Beach Boys are great at some stuff like their unique harmonies... but they're decidedly average at songs that require a distinctive solo voice. Any garage band in any town could cover Okie as well as the Beach Boys did here.

Merle Haggard was a major pothead in his 40's. Not to mention he did this song with Willie Nelson.

I wonder if Mike Love and Merle Haggard realized they lived in ZOG.

This is when manager Jack Rieley tried to make the Beach Boys hip again, smartening up the politics on the Surf's Up album and getting them a gig or two with the Dead. Why they chose this song, who knows. Irony? Or was Mike legit offering an alternative? Mysteries abound. Feel flows.

coool crowd.. anyone​ see someone they know?😂

Dumb stoners didnt understand that the song was mocking them or the fact the beach boys were mocking Merle Haggard for being at the time a backwards thinker.

Oh, these stoners weren't dumb. They understood, and they had a sense of humor about it. Merle was no backwards thinker either. He was simply reflecting the values of his father, who was indeed an Okie.

Haha i love how everyone is high. Oh the irony

I am Okie

Thank God for the tall black guy. Thanks for the diversity bro!

A bunch of hippies... ironic. but good!

Some scraggly looking New Yorkers.

They were to high to know the song is about them. lol

Naw, they knew.

when I see things like thes I wonder what the hell happened to Mike Love in a couple of year after this... He seemed to have embraced coolness but the worst was about to come!

Although it is fun as all get=out to see the performance, I never realized how much the song needed the infusion of the Hag's nuances and inflection in the voicing of the song. Thank you for this fun addition to the Tube!

I like, but for me, the best interpretation is from Merle Hggard

Wouldn't it be grand if we could go back to those good old days. This video brings back many memories!!!

The Beach Boys covered this?1 Now I HAVE heard everything!

Just love it

I bet it reeked of not only weed but gross ass.

Reflecting the essential ambiguity of existence,

Don williamdon

That was truly dreadful.

He wrote the song about hippy douch bags like this there ruining a classic fucking retards!

okie from Muskogee.............

mike at his best

best version of this song that I have ever heard

Stoners rocked back then

So many stoned people having a good time .

It was the way to go too a concert in the day, and very little trouble.

This is nothing but fucking cool, Sail on Sailors.

Anti-hippy song. Hippies everywhere. Irony. Ha ha.

Feedersuper Merle haggard wrote it as a parody of the fools of middle America that are self righteously straight

everybody's having a good time--the ultimate test of good music.

liberals today are so terrible that these people would be considered far right by today's standards lol.

Bryan su
These would be choir kids.👍

Far Out! Those Hippies have no idea what they are singing! OH the Irony!

Guess you haven't seen Merle and Willie, stoned with their long hair singing it.
You can find it on something called YouTube.

darun, I have seen that video and it is outstanding. My guess is that Merle and Willie grasped the irony, especially since Merle wrote the song. The Beach Boys get it also. Not so sure about these crazy kids, but they are grannies and grandpas now. This is a great video; hope everybody enjoys it as much as I do.

bubba gump. But they do.

Oh, they know.

what in the actual fuck did I just see there? I love Merle Haggard, and love this song but?????? The Beach Boys? That was our cruising hot rod songs from the BB ... oh my, they did it pretty good.

Name dropping the Grateful Dead...what a fucking fraud.

A young Kramer at 2:48!

Great Song. Love those hippies. Not sure they understood the irony! But they were having fun!

The crowd is probably out of their minds. I'm sure The Beach Boys were deliberate

The irony is multi-faceted. Hag wrote this as a satire on the "silent majority's" anti-hippie sentiment, though it was lost on the majority of folks who rocketed it to the top of the country charts. The Grateful Dead were also known to cover it live.

This is a psychotherapist's dream.

do you need a psrink after hearing this materpiece?

2:44-2:47  When I listen to this song.

Mike Love sang this without any irony.

Well to be fair, the only way to deliver irony is in its absence.

There could never be concerts like this today. Today there would be security clearance, cops, bouncers, CCTV cameras, and a shooting.

Brilliant

Too bad this isn't out on CD with Good Vibrations from London (with Blondie doing Wild Honey). This was the best live era of the band (early 70's). Saw them many times during the 70's but they only did 22-25 songs, now they do 35.

Irony of ironies.

Great song, but I didn't know that the Beach Boys ever did a version, not bad, can't beat Merle, but Mike is a great singer.....

Back when the left was actually fighting for something meaningful.

what was the meaningful thing? getting fucked up on drugs and partying? This isn't protest music, it's not promoting much anything

Exactly. The left never fought for anything meaningful. We live in ZOG.

I love this song, but I don't understand why the Beach Boy's did it. Was it because Mike Love was a right-winger? Or was it done in an ironical sense? By 1971 they were kind of hip again, and their audience wouldn't identify with "Okie From Muskogee". After all, they were playing the Fillmore, concerting with the Dead, and their albums were anything but beach, girls, and car music.

Joey- Considering the irony of Merle writing this song, the irony remains lost on you! It's just a great song and who cares who covers it!!

@KM R Merle came to see the song as a spoof, but he believed it when he wrote it...hardly ironic. 

Maybe they covered it because it was a good song?

It was definitely done for irony. Consider the fact that they had jammed with the Grateful Dead on it. They were saying 'We don't care what you think of us, let's just all have fun with it.'

Footnote: this was the largest gathering of rhythmically challenged individuals in History!

LMAO!!!

AMEN to that!

JayAre
😂👍

First thing I noticed too! I thought that funky beard was fake and while he mocked Merle. Haggart doesn't compute on micra-d o t. I can't even pretend to be out of rhythm...That's hard to do man! But the brotha' at 01:00? He was even early, John Lennon at 01:44 was out, Bill Gates was in his garage. How's that sanctuary workin' out far ya'? ;) #Kateslaw DO SOMETHIN' MAN!

can't help but tap my toes to this one!!

8 people are ACTUAL Okies from Muskogee.

The Beach Boys stepped up the tempo, added harmonies and made it there own.

I have seen the changes in the world. Send me back to Muskogee. Better to be a square than anything today.

MaghoxFr

@Stijn van Tongeren
?

I'm with you...I'm US Army retired...and I'm armed...Hoooaaahhh...

@*****
Because you walk around on Beverly Hills.

Nixon in 2020. He will bring the square back to the country.

This is my favourite thing ever. Irony at its finest :)

There are some severely rhythmically challenged people in that audience. Fantastic nonetheless.

DeadBunny69 😂

Caucasity is a very serious condition...

And autotune...

wow beach boys did a great job ..love it..

is it me , or does most of the crowd have no idea of the words of the song??

Do you, though? Merle Haggard wrote the song not about his own ideals but observing his fathers. Merle said he didn't necessarily agree with the words. It's a song about a man set in his ways, so to speak.

A great, fun sing-a-long! The views of the crowd are priceless. The best music videos show the audience participation.

+Wi To I don't like to see the audience only the musicians

I think some views of audience help viewers know it was not just a studio or TV performance & puts time in perspective.

you can tell its live without looking

Even with music turned down, there are good views of people, enhances "live" feel? Now with periscope, you may be on camera across world in real time!