Take a Load Off Your Feet

Gary Winfrey returned to California, after serving in the Air Force, in 1968. He and Al Jardine quickly rekindled a friendship that had begun back when both were in high school. Winfrey's wife Sandi was pregnant at the time, and her ankles were swollen. With the song "Hair" being popular at the time, somebody suggested writing a similar song about ankles. That song turned into "Take a Load Off Your Feet". Brian Wilson would later add some lyrics and help with the melody. Conversely, Jardine said of the song in a 1976 interview,

I was wearing Birkenstock sandles, and I read the instructions that came with them; it was inspriing to read about how important your feet are to the rest of your body. And so Brian and I got carried away. He'd come down at night and sit and play the bottles, these Sparklett's bottles we had lying around. He walked around on the roof - there was this skipping sound on the end of the song, you know, and that was Brian on the asphalt roof of the garage. Skipping around in a circle.[1]

The first session for the song was during the Add Some Music sessions in January 1970. The song was then put on hold until the early part of the next year. All of the sessions were held at Brian Wilson's home studio. Brian did the lead vocal on the first and third verse (though this verse not in falsetto and also sped up on the final mix-leading it to be confused with Jardine), alternating giving way to Jardine, who sang the second and fourth verse and also played bass guitar. The Beach Boys, with help from Winfrey, sang the backing vocals, and Brian added sound effects including hitting an empty 5-gallon Sparkletts glass water container with a rubber mallet for percussion, footsteps and the horn of his Rolls-Royce Phantom V.

• Take A Load Off Your Feet (Alternate Vocals Mix) on YouTube
• Take A Load Off Your Feet (Live/1993) on YouTube